(Television news this morning is saying the plane was owned by someone like "a co-executive producer of 'The Terminator'" who was no aboard - he leases it out when he's not using it.)

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Friday March 30 7:54 AM ET
Private Plane Crash Near Aspen, Colorado, Kills 18

DENVER (Reuters) - Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board were en route to Aspen, Colorado, early on Friday to lead the search for answers in the crash of a Gulfstream III jet that left 18 people dead.

All 15 passengers and three crewmembers of the private jet, en route from Los Angeles to Aspen when it went down near a highway outside the exclusive ski resort town, were killed on Thursday when the aircraft crashed in snowy weather, officials said.

While the cause of the crash was not immediately known, pilots said landing at the Pitkin County Airport, elevation 7,815 (2,400 meters), can be hazardous, even in clear weather.

CNN correspondent Charles Feldman, a licensed pilot familiar with the airport, said mountain peaks towering as much as 3,500 feet (1,075 meters) above the valley floor make the airport particularly difficult to navigate.

``Mountains and valleys create turbulence,'' Feldman told CNN. ''That create updrafts and downdrafts that make (the atmosphere) less stable than it would otherwise be.''

Tim Jackson, a pilot, agreed that landing at Aspen can be tricky, and said the wreckage of the plane was spread over a wide area. ``That's a pretty gruesome sight.''

Debbie Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration's regional office in Seattle, said the crash occurred at 7 p.m. MST/9 P.M. EST (0200 GMT). ``There was no distress call to the best of our knowledge,'' Taylor said.

A spokesman for Avjet Corp. of Burbank, California, said the flight originated with a crew of three in Burbank and picked up 15 passengers at Los Angeles International Airport before heading to Aspen. He declined to identify any of the aircraft's passengers.

``I didn't recognize any of the names as celebrities,'' one senior police officer, who had seen a list of the victims, told reporters. Relatives were being informed of the accident.

Avjet said it had managed the Gulfstream for Airborne Charter Inc., which owned the aircraft.

A dispatcher at the Pitkin County sheriff's office said the crash occurred near Highway 82 just outside Aspen. The highway, which is usually heavily traveled, was closed and traffic was diverted to nearby Snowmass Village, residents said.

Witnesses on the road at the time of the crash reported seeing the aircraft burst into a fireball after it went down about a mile (1.6 kilometers) northwest of the airport.

Two witnesses on the ground in Colorado said they saw a seat from the plane on the edge of the highway and television footage showed debris from the plane scattered along the road.

``It was very close to the road. Thank God that he did not land on the road,'' Madeline Osberger, who was on the highway just after the crash, told Denver television station KWGN.

Witnesses, who reported that emergency vehicles arrived about 10 minutes after the accident, said moderate to light snow was falling at the time of the crash.

The witnesses spoke of emergency workers calling out in the snow if any survivors needed assistance but all aboard had been killed.

The National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement the agency was sending a team to Colorado early on Friday to investigate look into the crash. The NTSB offered no further information on the crash, or its team.

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