MISSOULA, MONT., AND LOS ANGELES — A single-engine plane from California crashed in Butte, Mont., on Sunday afternoon, killing 14 to 17 people, including children, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said.
A witness in California said he saw about a dozen children ranging in age from 6 to 10. There was speculation that they may have been on a skiing trip.
The flight originated in Redlands and made stops in Vacaville and Oroville in Northern California, according to FlightAware.com, a Web-based aviation tracking system. The plane came down about 500 feet short of the runway, nose-diving in Holy Cross Cemetery shortly after 3 p.m. local time.
The original flight plan called for the plane to land in Bozeman, Mont., but the pilot made a last-minute diversion to Butte for unknown reasons, FAA spokesman Les Dorr said. The plane was a Pilatus PC-12, a single-engine, turbo-prop aircraft that is usually configured to carry nine people, he said.
In Oroville, where the plane was refueled, Tom Hagler, owner of the general aviation service, said several children briefly got off the plane to use the bathroom.
Hagler told the Associated Press that he saw about a dozen children ranging in age from 6 to 10 and four adults.
"There were a lot of kids in the group," he said. "A lot of really cute kids."
Martha Guidoni of Butte, who witnessed the crash, told The Times that she and her husband were taking a drive on the outskirts of town when they looked up and saw the plane overhead.
"All of a sudden we seen this airplane coming in, and my husband said, 'That plane's going to crash.' I was just going to say, 'No it's not,' and before I could get that out of my mouth, it took a nose-dive into the cemetery."
The impact left a 20-foot crater in the cemetery, Guidoni said. The couple's home burned down five years ago, and she could not bring herself to approach the wreckage, which was shooting flames into the sky.
"I hate fire. I mean, I literally hate fire," she said.
Her husband went down to see if he could help, but found the plane had disintegrated on impact, she added.
"He went down to the cemetery to see if there was anybody he could help, and it was too late. The plane was disintegrated. There was nothing and no one to help. It was icky, just a horrible thing."
She said the plane's engine could be heard before the crash.
