WAINWRIGHT, Alta. - Exactly five months after an Edmonton engineering company lost its founder in an airplane crash, a tragedy in the skies over eastern Alberta on Friday claimed five more lives, including those of his son and two other senior staffers.

Reagan Williams, president of A.D. Williams Engineering, was among those killed when the company's single-engine PA-46 Piper Malibu craft slipped below the radar near Wainwright and crashed beside the Battle River.

Also killed were Rhonda Quirke, the director of business integration and strategy, and Phil Allard, the chief financial officer, company spokeswoman Sue O'Connor said from Edmonton.

Officials did not identify the other two men who died.

Williams, a 41-year-old married father of one, was the pilot, said O'Connor. He held commercial and private pilot licences and regularly flew the firm's aircraft.

He took over the reins of the company after his father, company founder Allen Williams, 65, was killed when his Cessna 172 aircraft crashed in rocky terrain in Golden, B.C. on Oct. 28, 2007. That tragedy made national headlines when Allen's three-year-old granddaughter was found by rescuers hanging upside down in the wreckage unhurt and trying to reach for her beloved stuffed penguin. The girl is Reagan's niece.

"It's devastating. It's unimaginable for this to happen to one family and to one firm," said O'Connor.

"I don't know if any of us can imagine what it is like."

The airplane had left Edmonton's City Centre airport en route to a meeting at the company's Winnipeg office when it went down around 8:15 a.m. near Wainwright, 225 kilometres east of Edmonton.

RCMP and military personnel took up the search and the wreckage was found four hours later by the crew in a Griffon helicopter from CFB Cold Lake.

A senior investigator with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada who was at the crash site told the Edmonton Sun that the plane disintegrated in the air.

"It's fairly difficult to investigate because there was an in-flight breakup," said Wray Tsuji.

In an in-flight breakup, the plane is overloaded and overstressed, causing parts of the aircraft to break off before it hits the ground, Tsuji said.

Tsuji said it appears the inboard sections of the wings were still attached to the fuselage while the remainder of the wings had disintegrated.

Terry Sharp, owner of Sharp Underground Inc., an oilfield excavation company, said he was contacted to send a crew out to the area in case investigators had to plow through the dense bush to get to the crash scene.

Sharp, who is also a pilot, said they started seeing bits and pieces of the plane as they passed by an oilfield site belonging to Calgary-based EnerMark.

One chunk of debris had fallen on top of a construction trailer there, he said.

"It looked to me like it was an aileron and that's a wing part. That's what actually allows you to steer the airplane," Sharp said from his office in Wainwright.

As they continued through the woods, they began to see even more debris spread through the trees.

"... Then about another mile south, there was some tail parts of the airplane," Sharp said. "About another two miles south of that was the plane."

There are no tall towers or structures in the area, Sharp said.

It appeared much of the debris was scattered over a plateau above the Battle River, Sharp said.

"We know the aircraft was experiencing some difficulties," said John Pearson, another investigator with the Transportation Safety Board. "(The radar) showed the aircraft with some erratic behaviour.

"All we know is there was some deviation from a normal flight path before it went off the radar."

There was fog in the area and it had been snowing earlier in the day.

Back at the engineering company headquarters, steps are being taken to stabilize the firm in the wake of the tragedy.

O'Connor said Naseem Bashir, the firm's vice-president, was travelling to Edmonton from Calgary to take control.

"It's an incredibly difficult time for the firm, for the families and friends and obviously for the staff," she said.

"The staff are coming together to support each other, and the firm will be bringing in counsellors as soon as possible."

O'Connor said the leadership team was just getting going after the death of Allen Williams, who died along with 49-year-old Steven Sutton when the plane hit a rocky creek bed.

Rescuers were astonished to find little Kate Williams still alive. She had suffered only minor cuts and bruises and her first communication was to motion toward the plush toy she called Pablo, lying on the ground nearby.

Rescue experts say the toddler escaped death or serious injury because her grandfather had strapped her into a car seat.

At a memorial service for Allen, Reagan lauded his father for saving his niece by strapping her in.

"My dad was an amazing pilot and the fact that he was able to save Kate was the amazing thing," said Reagan.

He said he went to the crash site and it appeared "a series of unfortunate events" kept his father and Sutton from surviving the landing in the creek bed.

"It's hard for us to accept, really," he said at the time.

- By Dean Bennett in Edmonton.

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