A private plane carrying children and adults from California to a skiing vacation in Montana diverted from its planned destination and crashed on Sunday as it attempted to land at an airport in Butte, and a Federal Aviation Administration official said all on board — 14 to 17 people — had been killed.þþA mechanic at a California airport where the plane stopped in the morning said about a dozen children were on board. þþWitnesses at the scene of the crash said the aircraft was turning at a steep angle as it approached Bert Mooney Airport on the outskirts of Butte at midafternoon when it abruptly went into a nosedive, plunged into a wooded area in Holy Cross Cemetery and burst into flames upon impact.þþ“All of a sudden the pilot lost control and went into a nosedive,” Kenny Gulick, 14, a member of the Civil Air Patrol in Butte who lives near the airport, told The Montana Standard in Butte. “He couldn’t pull out in time and crashed into the trees of the cemetery.”þþAccording to flightaware.com, an airplane tracking service, the flight originated on Sunday in Redlands, Calif., near San Bernardino in the Los Angeles area, and had flown to Vacaville, about 30 miles southwest of Sacramento. The Associated Press reported that the plane had flown to Redlands on Saturday evening from San Diego.þþThe plane stayed at Vacaville for 50 minutes before taking off on a short hop to the municipal airport at Oroville, 65 miles north of Sacramento. The plane was on the ground at Oroville for about 30 minutes.þþIt was unclear at what point the children boarded the flight. Tom Hagler, a mechanic at the Oroville airport, said he let about a dozen children from the plane use the airport bathroom. They were about 6 to 10 years old, Mr. Hagler said, “a lot of really cute kids.” þþHe said the plane did not refuel at Oroville. Mr. Hagler spoke briefly with the pilot, he said, but did not recognize him or any of the children and did not know if any members of the group were local. He also said he would be surprised if as many as 17 people could have been on the single-engine plane.þþMike Fergus, an F.A.A. spokesman, told The A.P. that the plane, a turboprop, had taken off about 11 a.m. Pacific time from Oroville on what was to be a 700-mile flight to Gallatin Field at Bozeman, Mont. The Bozeman airfield is 10 miles south of the Bridger Bowl Ski Area in the Gallatin Mountains, the apparent destination of the vacationers.þþ“We think it was probably a ski trip for the kids,” Mr. Fergus said.þþBut at some point, Mr. Fergus said, the pilot canceled the flight plan and headed for Butte, 75 miles west of Bozeman. Bert Mooney Airport, three miles southeast of Butte’s central business district, has crossed paved runways of 9,000 and 5,100 feet. The plane crashed about 500 feet west of the airport at 3:26 p.m. Mountain time, more than three hours after taking off from Oroville. þþIt was not clear what went wrong. The change of destination by the pilot during the flight — to a closer airport — suggested that the plane may have experienced some problem and needed to land promptly. The National Transportation Safety Board sent an investigator from Butte to the scene.þþFive hours after the crash, Butte-Silver Bow County officials held a news briefing but offered few details. They said that the aircraft had no black box because it was not a commercial flight, and that no one on the ground was injured. The fire burned for 5 to 10 minutes, they said. þþA tarpaulin was used to cover the wreckage and the cemetery was closed for the night. Investigators were to resume their inquiry on Monday.þþThe aircraft was described by F.A.A. officials as a Pilatus PC-12 that was registered to Eagle Cap Leasing of Enterprise, Ore., and was apparently rented from that business. A Web site for the Pilatus PC-12 describes it as an airplane manufactured by Pilatus Aircraft of Switzerland and introduced for civil aviation in the United States in 1994. Its specifications cite seating in some commercial configurations for 9 or 10 people, but the aircraft that crashed was said to have seating for 12.þþBut Les Dorr, an F.A.A. spokesman, said that 14 to 17 people were on board. It was unclear if that many people, including children, could be safely accommodated on the plane, which is powered by a Pratt & Whitney turboprop engine.þþButte-Silver Bow County sheriff’s deputies, Montana highway patrol officers and fire and safety personnel were at the scene with a tangle of emergency vehicles. þþPhotographs taken by Martha and Steve Guidoni, who were visiting the cemetery when the crash occurred, showed flames and heavy smoke rising from a tree line on a hill crest in the distance, with grave markers in the foreground.þþThe National Transportation Safety Board said there had been 15 Pilatus accidents since 2001, 6 of them involving fatalities. A safety board database indicated that the aircraft that crashed had not been involved in any previous accidents.þþFederal officials called it the nation’s third major plane crash this year. In January, all 155 people on board a US Airways jetliner survived a crash landing in the Hudson River after a flock of geese struck both engines. In February, a commuter plane crashed into a house in a Buffalo suburb, killing all 49 on board and a man on the ground.þþReporting was contributed by Jim Robbins, Matthew L. Wald, Jack Begg and Kevin Quealy.þþ
Source: NY Times
