BUTTE, MONT. — Seventeen people, including several children, died here today when their plane crashed in a cemetery 500 feet short of an airport, according to a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman.

The single-engine turboprop plane had departed from Oroville, Calif., en route to Bozeman, about 86 miles east of the crash site.

"We think that it was probably a ski trip for the kids," FAA spokesman Mike Fergus said.

While the names of those killed have not been released, the crash has at least one Colorado connection.

The 2001 Pilatus PC-12 business jet was finished and originally sold by Pilatus Business Aircraft Ltd., a Broomfield-based subsidiary of Pilatus Aircraft of Switzerland.

The company employs about 70 people at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport, where staff finish interiors and accessories and add custom design logos for the North and South American markets.

A call to Pilatus Business Aircraft CEO Thomas Bosshard was not immediately returned Sunday night.

The plane is registered to Eagle Cap Leasing Inc. in Enterprise, Ore. I. Felkamp is listed as Eagle Cap's president in Oregon corporate records, but attempts to reach Felkamp by phone were unsuccessful.

In California, Tom Hagler said he saw a group of about a dozen children and four adults Sunday morning at the Oroville Municipal Airport, about 70 miles north of Sacramento.

Hagler, owner of Table Mountain Aviation, described the children as ranging from about 6- to 10-year olds. He let the children into his building to use the restroom.

"There were a lot of kids in the group," he said. "A lot of really cute kids."

Witnesses told local TV reporters that the plane crash created a huge fireball in the Holy Cross Cemetery near Bert Mooney Airport.

Fergus said the plane was attempting to land about 2:30 p.m. when it caught fire.

A eyewitness to the crash told The Montana Standard the plane was flying erractically before the crash.

"It looked like a stunt plane," 14-year-old Kenny Gulick told the paper. "All of a sudden the pilot lost control and went into a nosedive. He couldn't pull out in time and crashed into the trees of the cemetery."

Martha and Steve Guidoni, who were at a gas station across from the cemetery, said the plane "just nose-dived into the ground."

"My husband went over there to see if he could do anything," Martha Guidoni said.

The incident was the country's third major plane crash this year. All 155 people onboard survived after a US Airways jetliner landed in New York's Hudson River in January when a flock of geese disabled both engines, and a commuter plane fell on a house in a suburb of Buffalo, N.Y., killing all 49 passengers and a man in the home in February.