SANTA MONICA, Calif. — A construction company official says it’s believed the firm’s CEO and his son were killed in the fiery crash of a jet that slammed into a hangar after landing at a Southern California airport.
Morley Construction Vice President Charles Muttillo said Monday that CEO Mark Benjamin and his son, Luke Benjamin, were aboard the twin-engine Cessna Citation that crashed Sunday evening.
A fire department official called the crash “unsurvivable.”
The fire destroyed the hangar.
News helicopter footage showed all but the tail of the plane trapped under a collapsed section of the small building.
Luke Benjamin was a senior project manager at Santa Monica-based Morley Construction.
The twin-engine Cessna had taken off from Hailey, Idaho and landed in Santa Monica when it went off the right side of the runway at about 6:20 p.m. on Sunday and struck the hangar, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said.
A plume of smoke rising above the airport could be seen in the twilight sky over the populous neighborhoods surrounding the airport in the hours after the crash.
After hearing a loud boom, several neighbors ran toward the airport and saw the fire.
“It was very, very terrifying, it was sad to see just so much smoke, and the building collapse and the loud boom, you just put it all together and it’s scary,” witness Alyssa Lang told KABC-TV.
Witness Charles Thomson told the TV station the plane appeared to make a “perfectly normal landing” before veering off course.
The jet, a Cessna 525A manufactured in 2003, is registered to a Malibu, Calif. address and its corporate owner, Creative Real Estate Exchange, is based in Birmingham, Ala., and Atlanta, according to FAA public records.
Phone messages left after hours at the real estate company’s two offices were not immediately returned.
The National Transportation Safety Board would take over the investigation as is routine in such crashes.
Santa Monica Airport, located in the coastal tourist destination known for its trendy bars, restaurants and wooden-pier carnival, is home to many private jets, many of them used by wealthy Southern Californians from the entertainment industry.
The airport in Hailey serves Idaho’s Sun Valley resort area, which is a frequent destination for many celebrities, and the rich and powerful alike.