A single-engine plane lies beached on Hilton Head Island, S.C., Tuesday, the day after its pilot made an emergency landing. The pilot and his passenger survived the crash, but a man jogging on the beach was killed when he was struck by the aircraft.

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. — The kit-built single-engine plane had turned into a glider, almost silently trying to make an emergency landing along a stretch of beach. Pharmaceutical salesman Robert Gary Jones, ear buds in, listening to his iPod while jogging neither saw nor heard it and was struck from behind Monday evening and killed instantly.

"There's no noise," said aviation expert Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general for the National Transportation Safety Board. "So the jogger, with his ear buds in, and the plane without an engine, you're basically a stealth aircraft. Who would expect to look up?"

The 38-year-old Jones, whose mother said he was serious about nutrition and exercise, especially jogging, was on a business trip to Hilton Head for GlaxoSmithKline. He was looking forward to getting home to the northern Atlanta suburb of Woodfield, Ga., for his daughter's third birthday today, Pauline Jones said.

The pilot, Edward I. Smith of Chesapeake, Va., and his lone passenger walked away from the crash landing near the Hilton Head Marriott Resort and Spa. The Beaufort County Sheriff's Office named the passenger as David Henry, 59, also of Chesapeake, The Island Packet newspaper reported.

"I've got a lot of issues going on right now," Smith said. "I've got a plane that's all torn up. And I've got a young man that I killed."

The Lancair IV-P aircraft had lost its propeller, with oil smeared all over its windshield, making visibility difficult, authorities said. It was "basically gliding" when it instantly killed Jones, said Ed Allen, the coroner for Beaufort County on the South Carolina coast. The plane took off from Orlando, Fla., at 4:45 p.m. Monday and was en route to Virginia when it started leaking oil at about 13,000 feet, said Joheida Fister, spokeswoman for Hilton Head Island fire and rescue.

National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Keith Holloway said no cause had been determined. He said the plane would be inspected and investigators would interview the pilot and any witnesses.