Five people, all prominent members of the Long Beach community were killed in a plane crash yesterday at Long Beach Airport (LGB).  One person was reported to be critically injured.

The private plane, a twin-engine turboprop aircraft had just departed from Long Beach to Salt Lake City at about 10:30 AM on Wednesday, when it turned back to the airport for unknown reasons.  There were six people on the plane which was on its way to a skiing trip in Park City, Utah.  The plane, a Beechcraft King Air, was returning to the airport after its departure in an attempt to land

The plane burst into flames upon impact, and firefighters rushed to the scene to extinguish the flames.  The plane was completely devastated, and the wreckage had to be cut through to extricate the dead passengers.  Out of the five confirmed dead, four were passengers and one was the pilot.  The lone survivor of the crash was 51-year-old real estate executive, Mike Jensen.  He remains in a critical condition at Long Beach Memorial Hospital.  However, doctors are optimistic about his recovery.  Authorities still don't know what caused the crash.

The four identified victims - Mark Bixby, Jeff Berger, Bruce Krall and Tom Dean were prominent members of the community.  Bixby was involved in several local city groups, like the YMCA and the Rotary Club, and had been a bicyclist advocate for many years.  He was a founding member of the Long Beach Bicycle Festival.  The plane was owned by Tom Dean, a local real estate developer who is also a business partner of another victim, Jeff Berger. 

This was the first plane crash at Long Beach Airport since 2005, when a single-engine private plane crashed into a building near the runway after takeoff, killing two people on board.  California plane crash attorneys expect more information about the causes of this tragedy to come from the sole survivor of the crash.