Investigators look at the remains of a small plane along Main Street in East Hartford, Conn., a day following the plane's crash. The FBI is taking over as lead investigator in the crash of a small plane carrying a flight instructor and a student pilot.

EAST HARTFORD, Conn. — A plane crash that killed a student pilot and left his flight instructor with serious burns appears to have been a suicide attempt, a U.S. official familiar with the investigation said.

The two men had an altercation inside the cockpit of the small plane and the instructor was unable to regain control from the trainee before it crashed near the Connecticut headquarters of a military jet engine manufacturer, according to the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke Wednesday on the condition of anonymity.

The Piper PA-34 Seneca crashed with the two men aboard during a training flight Tuesday in East Hartford near the headquarters of Pratt & Whitney, while returning to Brainard Airport in Hartford, authorities said. The flight instructor was badly burned, but survived.

The instructor described the student pilot as disgruntled about learning to be a pilot, the U.S. official said.

The flight instructor is Arian Prevalla, 43, and the student was Feras Freitekh, said a law enforcement official, who wasn’t authorized to disclose the information and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

Prevalla’s social media pages indicate he is president of the American Flight Academy and a managing member of the Hartford Jet Center, both based in Hartford. The pages say he originally is from Albania and now lives in Hartford. On LinkedIn, Prevalla said he received a bachelor’s degree in Aviation Science from Mountain State University, a now-defunct university in Beckley, West Virginia.