ENGLISH DEYEA NEWS

Accident appears to involve children who were heading on a ski trip

Martha Guidoni / Montana Standard via Reuters Flames and billowing smoke rise after a single-engine passenger plane crashed Sunday into a cemetery, on approach to an airport in Butte, Montana, killing 17 people.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | BUTTE, Mont. - A small plane crashed Sunday as it approached an airport in Montana, killing 17 people, including several children, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said.

The single engine turboprop plane crashed about 500 feet (152 meters) from the airport in Butte while attempting to land, said spokesman Mike Fergus. The Montana Standard reported in an online story that it crashed in Butte's Holy Cross Cemetery.

The aircraft had departed from Oroville, California, and the pilot had filed a flight plan showing a destination of Bozeman, about 85 miles (136 kilometers) southeast of Butte. But the pilot canceled his flight plan at some point and headed for Butte, Fergus said.

Preliminary reports indicate the dead include numerous children, he said. There were no known fatalities on the ground, he added.

"We think that it was probably a ski trip for the kids," Fergus said.

Eyewitness accounts
Fergus says the plane was registered to Eagle Cap Leasing Inc. in Enterprise, Oregon, but he doesn't know who was operating the plane.

Calls to local authorities were not immediately returned.

The Montana Standard reported on its Web site that the plane crashed in the Holy Cross Cemetery, just south of the airport. An eyewitness told the Standard that the plane was doing steep angle turns and then went into a nose dive.

"All of a sudden the pilot lost control and went into a nosedive," Kenny Gulick, 14, told the news organization. "He couldn't pull out in time and crashed into the trees of the cemetery," Gulick said.

Fergus said the Pilatus PC-12 aircraft was manufactured in 2001. He said the National Transportation Safety Board has an investigator located in Butte who was thought to be on scene. The FAA's flight standards investigator was en route.

'Nose-dived into the ground'
Martha and Steve Guidoni, who were at a gas station across from the cemetery, said the plane "just nose-dived into the ground."

"My husband went over there to see if he could do anything," Martha Guidoni said.

National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Keith Holloway said its investigators were expected to arrive in Butte late Sunday or early Monday.

The incident was the country's third major plane crash this year. All 155 people onboard survived after a US Airways jetliner landed in New York's Hudson River in January when a flock of geese disabled both engines, and a commuter plane fell on a house in a suburb of Buffalo, New York, killing all 49 passengers and a man in the home in February.