STANWOOD, Wash. - An experienced pilot killed in the crash of a small plane told her husband the aircraft had lost power and that she was trying to land, the Snohomish County sheriff's office said.

Ann Price, 54, and her 34-year-old niece, whose name was not immediately released, died shortly before 1 p.m. Saturday, when the experimental fixed-wing plane Price was flying crashed in a field outside Stanwood, about 40 miles north of Seattle.

"Shortly before the crash the pilot was apparently talking with her husband and was telling him that she was either losing power or had lost power," said Rebecca Hover, spokeswoman for the Snohomish County sheriff's office.

Price told her husband she thought she could land in a field.

"She said 'I'm having problems with the engine' and then there was nothing," said Gordon Bakke, a friend of the pilot.

"It basically hit the ground and stopped instantly," Hover said. "It nose-dived."

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Ann Price was an experienced pilot.

The women had planned a short trip from from Arlington Municipal Airport to Camano Island, where Price had an airstrip on her property.

Friends remember Price grinning every time she was near an aircraft. She spent hundreds of hours flying in and out of the Arlington Airport, most recently mastering aerobatics in her experimental plane, the same plane that would ultimately plunge nose-first into the field near Stanwood.

Terry Burch helped teach Price how to fly the single engine RV. He says she was a natural, especially when it came to landing.

"She was absolutely the smoothest pilot I'd ever flown with," said Burch. "You would teach her something and she did it that way exactly, every single time."

Price's death also hit a charity organization hard. For seven years she worked with Angel Flight, piloting sick patients in remote areas to medical care.

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the crash.