PITTSFIELD – The crash of a Cessna 150 airplane Thursday morning took the lives of Pittsfield Municipal Airport’s fixed base operator, Ronald Curtis, 44, of Pittsfield, and his student pilot, Charles Brantner, 79, of Winterport.

The small plane was owned by Brantner, and police said he was piloting the craft when the crash took place.

Witnesses said the pair had been practicing “patterns,” or landings and takeoffs, all morning, and it was during one of those takeoffs that the plane’s engine appeared to quit.

Pittsfield public works employee Herb Whitley was about 200 yards away, patching the airport apron with blacktop. “He taxied down the runway and paused, like he was waiting for instructions,” said Whitley. “I was standing here, watching the plane, and it had gotten just about tree level … when the engine sputtered.”

Whitley said the pilot must have realized there was a problem because he had turned the plane around to land when Whitley heard the engine quit. “The plane just spiraled down, right into the ground.”

The plane crashed nose first into an unused runway, bursting into flame on impact.

Buck Durham, a pediatric heart surgeon, was working nearby in one of Curtis’ hangars. He said he heard the plane and realized the sound was coming from the wrong direction so he looked outside. “It powered down and then powered up quickly, stalled and then spun into the ground,” said Durham.

Durham said he ran to assist, severely burning his hand when he touched one of the plane’s wings, but he realized both men had been killed instantly.

“[Curtis] was a great guy,” Durham said. “He taught me to fly. He was a very good instructor and a safe pilot.”

Ed Porter was outdoors on the grounds of Maine Central Institute, about a half-mile from the airport, when he heard Brantner’s plane overhead. “I looked up and I made the comment to myself that the plane sounded like s–,” said Porter, who also flies planes out of the Pittsfield airport.

Standing outside Curtis’ flight school watching rescue efforts Thursday, Porter rhetorically questioned the reasons for flying. “Why do we do this? What drives this passion?” he asked.

Porter was one of a dozen local pilots, a tightknit group that flies for both business and pleasure, who converged on the airport to console one another.

Frank Woodworth of Detroit had high praise for his fellow pilot. “Ron was of the highest integrity and honesty. He was a hardworking, churchgoing family man,” said Woodworth. “Flying was his only vice.”

Pittsfield Mayor Charles Cianchette is also a pilot and lost his father, who had flown out of the Pittsfield airport, in a plane crash. Alton “Chuck” Cianchette, a former state senator and founder of Cianbro Corp., died in a crash Jan. 18, 2000, in Kentucky, en route to his summer home in Florida.

Pittsfield lost three other pilots in 1997 when Jeff Norris, Randy McPherson and Dick Boisvert, all area businessmen who were devoted to fishing, died when their small plane crashed returning from a fishing trip in Canada. They also had flown out of the Pittsfield airport.

Thursday’s crash was reported about 10:30 a.m., and Pittsfield police and fire responded to the call. The Somerset County Sheriff’s Department and Maine State Police assisted.

The bodies were removed from the site by the state medical examiner. Officials from the Federal Aviation Administration arrived by midafternoon. According to Maine State Police Sgt. Vicki Gardner, the FAA will examine the plane over the next two days in coordination with the National Transportation Safety Board.

This was the only accident at the airport resulting in death or injury recently, according to local pilots, who said there are 20,000 flights out of the airport annually.