The name of the pilot killed in a plane crash south of Forest City Friday has been released by authorities.

And Hancock County Sheriff Scott Dodd said representatives from the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration arrived at the scene around 11 a.m. Saturday to begin their investigation.

The pilot, Thomas E. Shelton, 66, of Destin, Fla., was on his way to the Forest City Municipal Airport to pick up three Columbia Southern University employees and transport them to Gulf Shores, Ala., when the plane crashed.

Waldorf College in Forest City was recently purchased by Alabama-based Mayes Education Inc., a subsidiary of Columbia Southern.

Dodd said the NTSB is the lead investigating agency.

A representative of Pratt and Whitney, the manufacturer of the plane’s engine, was also at the site, Dodd said.

Firefighters and other emergency personnel loaded the plane on a flatbed truck to transport it to the Waldorf hangar at the Forest City airport, according to Dodd and Hancock Emergency Management Coordinator Andy Buffington.

The federal investigators “want it to be someplace safe and warm,” Dodd said.

A ruling on the cause of the crash “is weeks and weeks down the road,” Dodd said.

A tractor was used to drag the plane across the farm field where it crashed shortly after 2 p.m. Friday.

Buffington said eventually every piece of wreckage will be removed.

“In some areas the snow is two to three feet deep and we will not find those pieces until spring,” he said.

He estimated there were hundreds of pieces of the plane “from the size of a fingernail to the size of the wing of an aircraft.”

Forest City Fire Chief Mark Johnson said firefighters first responded to the Forest City airport Friday because they weren’t sure of the exact location of the crash.

When the call came Johnson asked one Fire Department member to get his snowmobiles and a second firefighter to get his all-terrain vehicle with special track wheels.

“By the time we got to the wreck those guys were there,” Johnson said.

The crash was found when Dick Trimble, fixed based operator at the Forest City airport, used a spotter plane to determine the location.

“He kept circling the area,” Johnson said.

The crashed plane was found on the edge of a hill in a farm field.

“Not that we respond to a lot of plane crashes, but you probably know it’s a long shot” to have survivors, Johnson said. “But you never know.”

According to the FAA Web site, the plane was a Piper PA-31T fixed-wing multi-engine turbo-prop manufactured in 1978. Mayes Aviation LLC applied for registration of the plane Oct. 28.

— Mary Pieper of the Globe Gazette contributed to this report.