LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. (AP) The pilot who died when his small plane crashed into a suburban Atlanta house, killing a woman inside the home, was headed to Tennessee to see his six daughters, a federal official said Saturday.

The pilot, a cancer survivor who had surgery earlier this year, was on his way to see his daughters in Sparta, Tenn., said Butch Wilson of the National Transportation Safety Board.

Ted Bailey, chief forensic investigator for the Gwinnett Medical Examiner's Office, identified the pilot as 58-year-old James Wardlaw of Atlanta. The woman killed in her Lawrenceville home was identified as 62-year-old Judith Kirchner.

Calls by The Associated Press to several numbers in Georgia and Tennessee listed under Wardlaw's name rang unanswered Saturday. Calls to a number listed under Kirchner's name reached a busy signal.

The crash happened just before 1:30 p.m. Friday, not long after the plane had taken off from Gwinnett County Airport. The pilot sent no distress signals, according to the control towers at the Gwinnett and Atlanta airports.

Kirchner was downstairs when the plane hit. Her husband was upstairs but managed to escape by going down the stairs and out through the front door. He was evaluated by paramedics at the scene and released.

NTSB crews sorted through the wreckage Saturday, trying to figure out what caused the twin-engine Cessna 310 to crash into the house. The structure was destroyed by the impact and subsequent fire.

``There's a lot of house to deal with that's intertangled with the plane,'' Wilson said.

Wardlaw's wife told Wilson that her husband was a humanitarian who liked to help people by flying them places. He bought the plane from a man who is now in Iraq, Wilson said. He said Wardlaw's last FAA flight physical was in 2006 and he had logged 1,200 flight hours by then.

(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)