Montrose – A single-engine plane trying to land at the Montrose airport slammed into an unoccupied truck parked on a residential street and exploded into flames today, killing the pilot and a passenger, authorities said.
No one else was aboard the plane and no one on the ground was killed, said Montrose Fire Battalion Chief Allen Weese. The victims’ names were not released.
“There was this big bang and my wife yells, ‘Oh my God, the truck is on fire,”‘ said Levi Hawks, the owner of the truck, which was parked outside his house. He said neither he nor his wife saw the plane come down.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the Beech Bonanza A36TC was registered to Heartland Airplanes of Olathe, Kan. A man who answered the phone at Heartland said the plane had recently been sold but he declined to identify the buyer.
FAA spokesman Allen Kenitzer said authorities were unsure where the flight originated because no flight plan had been filed.
The cause of the crash was unknown. Kenitzer said investigators from the FAA and the NTSB were being sent to the scene today.
Montrose, about 180 miles southwest of Denver, was the scene of a November 2004 crash that killed the son of NBC Sports executive Dick Ebersol and two others. The NTSB said ice on the wings was a factor in the crash.
Today’s fatal crash was the first in Montrose since then, according to the NTSB Web site.
The neighborhood where the Beech Bonanza crashed is under an airport flight path, Montrose County sheriff’s spokesman Dick Deines said.
Hawks said his truck – the tractor unit of a tractor-trailer rig, with no trailer attached – and his son’s pickup burned.
Firefighters kept the flames from spreading to nearby homes, Fire Chief Bob Pistor said.
Nancy Weese, who lives across the street, said the fire was so big it obscured the plane.
“At first we didn’t know there was a plane there, because of the fire,” she said.
She said burning fuel spilled onto her lawn.
Weese, who is the mother of the fire battalion chief, said the plane would have smashed into her house if Hawks’ truck had not been parked where it was.
“I just thank the Lord the truck was there,” she said.
