Five members of a St. Helena family died Sunday in a Montana plane crash in which authorities say there were no survivors.

Dr. Erin Jacobson, his wife, Amy, and their children Taylor, 4, Ava, 3, and Jude, 2, were en route to Bozeman to visit friends and family.

“They were going to Bozeman for the week — (Amy’s) parents were already there,” said Elizabeth Naylor of Angwin, a close friend of the Jacobson family for the past three years.

“They were extraordinary, wonderful, giving and kind. Our daughters grew up together. My daughter asked today if we could have their daughter over for a play date this week, and we told them we could after they got back.”

The Jacobsons, who lived on Pratt Avenue, were active in the Montessori Family Center in St. Helena.

“Erin was an eye doctor, a surgeon, in St. Helena and Napa, and Amy was a dental hygienist in Angwin, but she was a full-time mom to three children,” said Naylor. “Everybody in town knows them — they were really, truly an amazing family.”

The Jacobsons were among the passengers on a single-engine turbo prop airplane that crashed into Butte’s Holy Cross Cemetery Sunday afternoon, bursting into flames and killing everyone aboard — believed to be 16 people.

Authorities are being tight-lipped while the crash is under investigation, but eyewitnesses to the event describe a harrowing scene. The crash occurred about 500 feet from the airport, authorities said.

Kristi Dunks, air safety investigator for the Southwest Regional Office of the National Transportation Safety Board, confirmed there were no survivors.

Dunks declined to offer information about the plane or why it crashed. Dunks also would not say if there had been a distress call from the pilot.

It was partly cloudy, the visibility was 10 miles and winds were blowing from the northwest around 10 mph at the time of the crash, according to the National Weather Service.

The aircraft had departed from Oroville, 70 miles north of Sacramento, and the pilot had filed a flight plan showing a destination of Bozeman, about 85 miles southeast of Butte. But the pilot canceled his flight plan at some point and headed for Butte, said Mike Fergus, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Dunks said it was attempting to land at Bert Mooney Airport when it crashed. Officials at the Butte airport said they had no radio contact with the plane. Dunks said the plane did not have a “black box” voice data recorder on board.

Fergus said that a large number of the dead were children. “We think that it was probably a ski trip for the kids,” Fergus said.

The plane was registered to Eagle Cap Leasing Inc. in Enterprise, Ore., Fergus said. The flight originated from San Diego on Saturday night.

Tom Hagler, who runs an aviation business at the Oroville Municipal Airport, said he saw a group of about a dozen children and four adults Sunday morning at the airport. Hagler, owner of Table Mountain Aviation, a business that conducts flight training and maintenance at the city-owned airport, said, “There were a lot of kids in the group. A lot of really cute kids.”

Hagler said he showed the pilot where he could fill up on fuel, and the pilot said he expected his flight to take two and a half hours.

Dunks said Sunday evening that the bodies have not been recovered from the site. Butte-Silver Bow Coroner Lee LaBreche is on the scene, and Sheriff John Walsh said the Missoula County coroner is also involved.

Dunks said more information should be available Monday morning. She said specialists from Washington, D.C., arrived late Sunday and representatives from the manufacturer of the plane and its engines are also on their way.

Tim Trainor, Pat Ryan and Gerard O’Brien of the Montana Standard, a sister paper of the Napa Valley Register in Butte, Mont., contributed to this story, as did the Associated Press.