A commuter airliner and a small, single-engine plane collided in the air northwest of San Luis Obispo, Calif., yesterday morning, killing at least 17 persons. There were no survivors, according to the San Luis Obispo County sheriff's office.
The commuter, Wings West Flight 628, had taken off from San Luis Obispo Airport for San Francisco moments before the crash, which occurred about seven miles from the airport. Wings West officials said the flight originated in Santa Maria and carried 13 passengers and a crew of two.
Names of the passengers were withheld pending notification of kin.
The sheriff's office said two persons were believed to be in the small plane, described as a single-engine, four-seat Rockwell Commander 112TC.
The San Luis Obispo airport has no tower, but Federal Aviation Administration sources said the Wings West flight appeared on the FAA's regional radar when it reached an altitude of 3,100 feet. After the flight was cleared to an altitude of 7,000 feet, "We lost both radar and radio contact with the flight almost immediately," an FAA source said.
The small plane was not under the guidance of FAA controllers, the sources said. It could not be learned if the plane was using equipment that would have electronically reported its altitude, and thus the potential for collision, to air traffic controllers in the regional center at Palmdale.
The Los Angeles Times reported that an FAA employe at Paso Robles Airport said an instructor took off with his student in the small plane at 10:55 a.m. PDT during excellent weather. FAA sources told The Washington Post that no flight plan had been filed.
The Times said the plane was registered to Aesthetech Corp. of Paso Robles, according to officials.
It is normal, legal procedure for small planes to be flying outside the FAA's air-traffic control system. At airports with no towers, pilots are solely responsible for avoiding other traffic. Weather at the time of the accident was described as clear, with visibility 15 miles. A safety board investigation team was en route last night to the crash site.
Flight 628, a Beechcraft C99 twin-engine turboprop, left San Luis Obispo at 11:18 a.m. PDT, according to the National Transportation Safety Board here.
The wreckage was located between two peaks in rugged terrain north of San Luis Obispo, on the Pacific Coast about 175 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
Bill Benica, news director of station KVEC in San Luis Obispo, told United Press International, "It's an extremely ugly situation out there. The wreckage is spread up to 300 yards of either side of a county road. The Wings West aircraft is down inside a gully and cannot be seen from the road.
"The main rear fuselage to the private plane is intact, but that's all. A large piece of fuselage to the Wings West aircraft was on fire."
Charlie Doster saw the crash while driving down a nearby road. "We saw pieces falling and another section going off to the right-hand side and exploding and crashing and burning into the hillside," he said.
"I jumped over a fence and ran over to the crash site to see if anybody was alive, and there was one individual who was dead, and then I ran up to the other crash area and there appeared to be an individual dead there also. No one appeared to be alive," he said.
Authorities said their search was being hampered by sightseers.
Wings West identified the pilot as Capt. Paul Nebolon, 28, of Rolling Hills, Calif., and the co-pilot as Deverl Johnson, 45, of Merced, Calif.
Wings West, in business for five years, has a fleet of 14 commuter planes and serves 11 cities in California, from Los Angeles north to Redding, a spokesman said. It is based in San Luis Obispo, operates about 150 flights a day and carries about 34,000 passengers a month.
