Local News

BUTTE, Montana (CBS 5 / AP / BCN) ― A small plane from California crashed Sunday as it approached a Montana airport for landing, killing all 14 people aboard including a doctor and his family from Napa County, officials said.

Investigators on Monday said they were looking into the possiblity that icing on the wings of the single engine turboprop was to blame for the crash — after it became less likely that overloading was to blame, given that half of the 14 people on board were small children.

The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration had said it was looking at overloading because the Pilatus PC-12 aircraft manufactured in 2001 was designed to carry a total of 10 people, including pilot.

"It will take us a while to understand," said Mark Rosenker, acting chairman of the NTSB. "We have to get the weights of all the passengers, we have to get the weight of the fuel, all of the luggage."

"We will also be looking at everything as it relates to the weather," he added.

While descending Sunday in preparation for landing at the Bert Mooney Airport in Butte, the plane passed through a layer of air at about 1,500 feet that was conducive to icing because the temperatures were below freezing and the air "had 100 percent relative humidity or was saturated," according to AccuWeather, a national forecasting service.

Safety experts said similar icing condition existed when a Continental Airlines twin-engine turboprop crashed into a home near Buffalo Niagara International Airport last month, killing 50.

A possible aerodynamic stall in which ice causes the plane to lose lift, and the pilot's reaction to it, has been the focus of the Buffalo investigation.

"It's Buffalo all over again, or it could be," said John Goglia, a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board. "Icing, given those conditions, is certainly going to be high on the list of things to look at for the investigators."

The plane, carrying three California families, nose-dived into a cemetery 500 feet from its destination in Butte. Butte Silver-Bow Sheriff John Walsh said there were a few people at the cemetery at the time of the crash, but no one on the ground was injured.

The flight was headed to a retreat for the ultrarich, the Yellowstone Club near Yellowstone National Park, for a skiing vacation. The club is a millionaires-only resort that counts former Vice President Dan Quayle and Microsoft founder Bill Gates among its 340 members.

Five of the 14 victims in Sunday's crash were members of a family from St. Helena in Napa County. The St. Helena Hospital identified them Monday as ophthalmologist Dr. Erin Jacobson, 36, his wife Amy and the couple's three young children: 4-year-old Taylor, 3-year-old Ava and 1-year-old Jude.

In a statement Monday, the hospital said Dr. Jacobson was a "bright star and a well-loved physician."

Jean Miller, a supervisor at the Eye Care Center for Napa Valley, said Dr. Jacobson specialized in cataract and glaucoma treatments.

Jacobson grew up in the Napa Valley and graduated Magna Cum Laude
from Pacific Union College in 1996. He was active in mission work and had performed eye surgery in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, according to the center.

The other crash victims were identified as Michael and Vanessa Pullen of Lodi, Calif., and their children, 9-year-old Sydney and 7-year-old Christopher; Brent and Kristen Ching of Durham, Calif., and their children, 5-year-old Heyley and 4-year-old Caleb; and the pilot, Buddy Summerfield.

"We were going on a vacation with all the grandkids," said Irving M. "Bud" Feldkamp, who lost two daughters and their families in the crash. "They were all excited about skiing."

Feldkamp leased the airplane that crashed. He said he, his wife and another daughter had driven from Southern California to Montana for the vacation.

"We were at the entrance to the Yellowstone Club when I got a cell phone call" from my nephew, Feldkamp said. "He saw it on TV. He said, 'Nobody survived.' And we knew it was our plane."

The plane carrying the families left Oroville, Calif., headed for Bozeman, Montana, but the pilot changed his flight course to Butte - about 85 miles to the northeast, where it went down on final approach Sunday. There was no apparent reason given for the change in flight plan.

On Monday, snow fell gently as investigators gathered at the scene of the crash in the Holy Cross Cemetary. The NTSB said it expected to recover all the aircraft wreckage by Friday, but answers could be months away.

Safety experts said finding the cause of the crash is likely to be significantly complicated by the absence of either a cockpit voice recorder or a flight data recorder, which isn't required for smaller aircraft that don't fly commercial passengers like airlines and charter services.

The pilot also gave "no indication of any trouble" to air traffic controllers that the aircraft was experiencing difficulty when he asked to divert to Butte, the NTSB's Rosenker said.

Like thousands of small airports across the country, the Butte airport doesn't have radar control.

With no radar, a pilot approaching would normally switch to a radio frequency used by aircraft coming in and out of Butte to find out if there were any other aircraft in the area. Then the pilot would use visual flight rules and follow the procedures for landing at that airport.

It was partly cloudy, the visibility was 10 miles and winds were blowing from the northwest around 10 mph at the time of the crash, along with a temperature of 44 degrees Fahrenheit and a "broken cloud deck at 6,500 feet," according to Peter Felsch, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service.

Former NTSB chairman Jim Hall pointed to similarities between the Montana crash and a March 26, 2005 crash near Bellefonte, Pa., in which a pilot and five passengers were killed.

The plane in both cases was the Pilatus PC 12/45 and was on approach to an airport. In Switzerland, Markus Kaelin, executive assistant to the chairman of Pilatus Aircraft, the maker of the aircraft, said the company had no comment.

"I'm certain they are also going to look at the weather conditions at the time and the pilot's training," Hall said.

Investigators said Monday that the 65-year-old pilot, Buddy Summerfield, was a former Air Force pilot with thousands of flight hours piloting civilian aircraft.

Meantime, Hall pointed to a recommendation on NTSB's "most wanted list" of safety improvements that FAA test the ability of turboprop planes to withstand a particular type of icing condition called "super cooled liquid drops" before certifying the aircraft design for flight. FAA officials have said they're working on that recommendation.

In both the Pennsylvania and Montana crash cases there were reports of conditions conducive to icing at lower elevations and witness reports that the plane appeared to dive into the ground.

One witness to Sunday's crash told CBS' "The Early Show" on Monday that the plane jerked to the left before nose-diving into the cemetery.

Kenny Gulick, 14, said he thought he was watching a stunt plane because the pilot was making so many turns.

"He jerked the plane to the left too quickly and lost control of it, but that's just my guess," said Gulick. "And all of a sudden it went into a nosedive. I noticed the pilot trying to pull up but he was extremely low to the ground and he didn't pull up in time."

Steve Guidoni of Butte said he was driving by the cemetery and also saw the plane nosedive into the ground. He stopped and ran over to see if he could help.

"It smelled like diesel fuel to me," said Guidoni, 61. "There was nothing left of it. It just went straight into the ground. I went over there to try to help. I thought maybe I would pull someone out of the fire."

Guidoni said he saw luggage and seat cushions lying around, but no bodies. He said the biggest piece of the plane was the size of a kitchen table.

"You wouldn't even know a plane was there," he said.

Nick Dipasquale, 19, was working at a gas station across the street.

"I heard a loud bang," he said. "It sounded like someone ran into the building."

He said he ran outside to see flames as tall as the trees.

Dipasquale said people who were fueling their cars said they saw the plane flying low, begin a turn, start to wobble and then slam into the ground. 

In California, Tom Hagler said he saw the group of seven adults and seven children on Sunday morning at the Oroville Municipal Airport, about 70 miles north of Sacramento, before they took off for Montana.

Hagler, owner of Table Mountain Aviation, said he let the children into his building to use the restroom.

"There were a lot of kids in the group," he said. "A lot of really cute kids."

Hagler said he showed the pilot where he could fuel his plane, and the pilot said he expected his flight to take two-and-a-half hours.

The crash was the fourth major plane accident in the U.S. in slightly more than three months.

On Dec. 20, Continental Airlines plane veered off a runway and slid into a snowy field at Denver International Airport, injuring 37 people. No one was killed.

In January, a US Airways jetliner landed in New York's Hudson River after a flock of geese disabled both its engines. All 155 people onboard survived.

Then last month came the Buffalo commuter plane crash. That plane fell on a house in a suburb of Buffalo, killing all 49 passengers and a man in the home.

Before the Buffalo crash there hadn't been an accident involving a commercial airliner in the U.S. in which there were fatalities in more than two years.

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