CARLSBAD -- Four people were killed Tuesday morning in a fiery crash when a privately owned, twin-engine jet overshot the runway while trying to land at McClellan-Palomar Airport.

The plane hit a nearby storage warehouse and the ensuing explosions caused flames and thick black smoke to fill the air. Burning fuel ran down nearby streets as people ran to help before firefighters arrived to blanket the scene in white foam and put out the fire.

The Cessna Citation Ultra, which was flying in from Idaho, crashed at 6:38 a.m. and the airport was shut down for more than four hours after the crash.

"The (plane's) front end was just gone," said Chuck Sanfilippo, 42, of Chula Vista, a construction manager who works in the area. "Dark, billowing smoke, flames. There was probably nothing anybody could have done at that point (to save anyone)."

Federal investigators are trying to unravel what caused the plane to crash at the end of Runway 24.

Authorities were not officially releasing the names of the three men and a woman on board the plane, which left Friedman Memorial Airport in Hailey, Idaho, about two hours before the crash.

However, Sun Valley Aviation in Hailey was reporting that the victims were pilot Jack Francis of Boise; co-pilot Andy Garrett of the Hailey area; and passengers Janet Shafran of Ketchum, Idaho, and Frank Jellinek Jr. of Rye, N.H. Jellinek's family lives in La Jolla.

A San Diego County medical examiner's investigator said the victims had been tentatively identified, but a dental comparison was going to be done before their names were released. That might be this afternoon, she said.

The plane was registered to Goship Air LLC of Ketchum, a company owned by Kipp Nelson and Steve Shafran, according to The Associated Press. Janet Shafran was the wife of Steve Shafran, who was appointed this month to the Ketchum City Council.

An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board to determine what caused the accident will take at least a few days at the scene and then a few more days of followup, said Patrick Jones, NTSB air safety investigator. A final report will take months.

The investigators will check over and document the wreckage; talk to witnesses; look at the plane's records, flight logs and engine; as well as review weather conditions and the last 72 hours of the pilot's life, said Terry Williams, NTSB spokesman in Washington, D.C.

"That's pretty standard," Williams said about the pilot review. "We find out if he was fatigued or anything."

Jones said investigators believe there is a flight recorder on the plane that would record anything said by the pilot and any transmissions.

"I have not heard of any distress call at all," said Bill Polick, airport spokesman.

He said the airport's control tower doesn't open until 7 a.m., but the airport is open around the clock and there are many flights in and out while the tower is closed.

The airport, at 2198 Palomar Airport Road, serves private planes and business jets as well as commuter airlines America West Express and United Express.

More than 400 aircraft, including a large number of corporate jets, make their home at the airport. Nike, Calloway Golf, Upper Deck and professional athletic teams use it as well.

"The plane was relatively new with all the bells and whistles, and it's very questionable as to what went wrong," said Ramona Finnila, chairwoman of the Palomar Airport Advisory Committee and a former Carlsbad city councilwoman.

Polick said there were light variable winds as the plane made what is known as a "long landing" from the east, and then the pilot "apparently tried to take off" or couldn't stop.

The plane shot off the west end of the 4,600-foot runway, smashed through navigation equipment, and hit the top of a single-story mini-storage building within the Carlsbad Airport Storage complex on private property at the north end of Palomar Oaks Road, authorities said.

A trail of navigation locator parts and aircraft pieces was strewn down an embankment up to the plane wreckage. The only recognizable part was the tail.

"It sounded like something clipped the top of a building," said Ben Biley, who was working in an office on top of a second-story building next to the crash. "The second sound was like a cannon shot, really loud -- boom. It shook the building."

Biley said he looked outside toward his new blue $35,000 Subaru sports car, which was on fire.

Flames almost three stories high, blazing tornados, were roaring above the plane crash and the west end of the storage building, he said.

"There was a beach ball-size hole in the side of the hallway window," said the 23-year-old San Diego resident. "And things were exploding. I got outside as quickly as I could."

Another witness said there were burning plane parts on Palomar Oaks Road. Someone else described a loud explosion as "thunder and smoke."

"It just looked like it did a cartwheel and was facing the other direction," Sanfilippo said.

A power line was downed during the crash, acrid smoke rolled through the area, and burning fuel ran south down Palomar Oaks Way toward the Dryden Place intersection.

Carlsbad firefighters, who have practiced for such emergencies, were there within minutes, along with an airport fire crew and police.

With the amount of fire and the severity of the crash, fire crews thought there was little likelihood of survivors, Carlsbad fire Division Chief Chris Heiser said later.

"Our biggest concern was to control that fire and keep it from spreading," said Heiser, noting it was the worst air crash he's worked in 20 years. "We knew it was an aircraft. It just took us awhile to figure out where it was."

As fire crews from Encinitas, Vista and San Marcos also headed into the area, airport and Carlsbad firefighters battled the flames. It took five to 10 minutes to put out the fire, and human remains were found, said Heiser.

"We didn't move any victims," he said.

Officials closed the airport and restricted the air space around it until about 11 a.m., then reopened the airport for actual flight takeoffs and landings only. No training or sightseeing flights were allowed.

The plane crashed next to the site of the city's future municipal golf course, which is under construction, coming down less than 100 feet from the contractor's construction trailer. Construction on that eastern edge of the course was halted for the day, city officials said.

According to the NTSB's online aviation accident database, there were 72 accidents at Palomar McClellan from 1966 through 2006. A total of 12 of those accidents, or 16.6 percent, involved one or more fatalities, the database information revealed.

Saying she was "very shaken," Finnila said nothing like this has happened during her nearly two decades on the board, which acts in an advisory capacity to the county.

"After the report is issued on the cause (of the plane crash), if there can be remediation steps that can be taken, they will be taken," she said. "But, if it was pilot error, there's not much we can do at this end of it."

Staff writers Yvette Urrea and Paul Sisson and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Contact staff writer Jo Moreland at (760) 740-3524 or jmoreland@nctimes; Barbara Henry at (760) 901-4072 or bhenry@nctimes.com, and Mark Walker at (760) 740-3529 or mwalker@nctimes.com.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Related Links

• McClellan-Palomar Airport - http://www.co.san-diego.ca.us/dpw/airports/mcpal.htm

• Federal Aviation Administration - http://www.faa.gov