JASPER, Ala. — A teen pilot killed along with two friends in an Alabama plane crash had his own key to the aircraft and had flown it many times, his mother said on Wednesday, denying authorities' assertion that the plane had been taken without permission.

Sherrie Smith said her 17-year-old son Jordan Smith was the one flying the plane that went down in the woods on Tuesday night.

The Federal Aviation Administration said the Piper PA 30 crashed less than a mile from the Walker County Airport in Jasper, which is northwest of Birmingham.

Smith says the owner of the plane had let her son fly it many other times and had given him his own key. Her son was a high school junior who fell in love with flying at an early age and was one test short of earning his private pilot's license.

“He had used the plane many times before,” she said.

Her son had left the house about 6 p.m. to meet friends at another airport in the area, and she said she last spoke to him by cellphone about four hours later. One of her son's friends called about reports of a plane crash, and she tried to reach Jordan again but couldn't.

Walker County sheriff's Chief Deputy James Painter said earlier Wednesday that authorities believed the three teenagers took off in the plane without permission.

“We don't know for sure but we think it was some teenagers who stole the plane and were sort of joyriding it,” Painter said.

A call to the National Transportation Safety Board was not immediately returned.

Walker County Coroner J.C. Poe said the other two people killed in the crash were Brandon Tyler Ary, 19, and Jordan Seth Montgomery, 17.

The plane had departed from the small airport about 10:30 p.m. in overcast skies and a low cloud ceiling, airport manager Edwin Banks said.

“It was a student pilot flying an airplane without permission, an airplane that he was not qualified to fly at night,” Banks said.

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