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Two light planes flying in clear, calm skies collided above a golf course here Monday morning, killing all four people aboard and sending horrified golfers below scurrying for cover.
One of the two-seat, propeller planes was descending to land at Van Nuys Airport and the other was patrolling a crude oil pipeline that runs from Bakersfield to refineries in Wilmington and El Segundo, federal aviation officials said.
"I was on the right side of the fairway and about to hit when we heard the explosion," said Darryl Gordon, 38, of Santa Clarita, one of four friends playing the sixth hole when one of the planes crashed into the Cascades Golf Club.
"We just watched as everything unfolded in front of us," he added. "Then we ran over a little embankment and jumped behind a little hill [for protection]."
Officials said the planes were headed in the same direction, although witnesses said they collided head-on. Authorities are still investigating the cause of the crash, which occurred shortly before 10 a.m. and involved an experimental Questair Venture and a Bellanca Citabria Scout.
Officials would not release the names of the victims. But a spokesman for Petersen Aviation, a charter company at Van Nuys Airport, identified the pilot of the Questair as Charlie Oliver, one of the company's captains of Gulfstream aircraft and other corporate aircraft.
Joseph Molina, spokesman for Petersen, said company officials described Oliver as "an outstanding pilot" whose duties included flying dignitaries, entertainers and business leaders around the world. Molina said he did not know the identity of the woman flying with Oliver.
In addition, a pilot with the service surveying the pipeline said a National Transportation Safety Board official confirmed that the other downed plane was owned by Thomas Quist, 42, of Bakersfield.
Friends and relatives said Quist, owner of Patroline, left Bakersfield Municipal Airport on Monday morning with pilot Kevin Kaff, 22, also of Bakersfield, who was training to take over the route. The plane never returned.
Witnesses said the red Questair Venture nose-dived into a gravel clearing near the entrance to a Metropolitan Water District filtration plant, across the Golden State Freeway west of the golf course.
Investigators said the bodies of Oliver and a woman were found inside its twisted wreckage.