Christmas Gift Turns Tragic as Two Die in Plane Crash : Accident: A teen-ager and an instructor pilot are killed when their small craft smashes into a Ventura hillside.

A 17-year-old Thousand Oaks boy and his instructor pilot were killed in a fiery single-engine airplane crash during a flight given to the boy as an early Christmas present from his father.

Michael Jellander and Jacqueline Thompson, 29, of Ventura, died instantly when their Cessna 152 aircraft smashed into a Ventura hillside Saturday afternoon, authorities said. No one on the ground was injured by the crash, which sparked a five-acre brush fire.

Rolla (Tommy) Thompson, 71, of Thousand Oaks, said his daughter was giving a plane ride to Jellander, who was interested in taking flying lessons. “It was an early Christmas present--it was a gift certificate for a familiarization flight,” said Thompson, a close friend of the Jellander family.

Thompson said his daughter received her instructor’s license in May and had logged more than 500 flight hours. “She loved flying,” he said, adding that his daughter was working toward following his career path as an airline pilot. “We’ve flown together for three or four years. . . . I was going to fly with her today.”

Jellander’s father, Herbert, a Continental Airlines pilot, said he had given Michael the gift certificate because his son was interested in learning to fly. He declined further comment, saying he was unprepared to talk publicly about the loss of his only son.

“I think he wanted to be a pilot, like his dad,” said Matt Haggenmiller, a friend of Michael’s and a teammate on the Thousand Oaks High School swim team. “He told me that he might not be on the swim team this year. He said he might be getting flying lessons from his dad and if he did that, he wouldn’t have time to be a swimmer.”

Jellander’s friends said flying was one of his main ambitions. “He said he wanted to get a pilot’s license,” said Dean Schmitt, another friend.

Thompson, who worked part-time as a flight instructor at Channel Islands Aviation since May, was “a very competent flier,” said Richard Fuller, her supervisor. “She’s demonstrated that throughout her training here.”

Investigators spent most of Sunday combing through the hillside wreckage in search of a cause of the 4:52 p.m. crash. Although officials said they had no answers, they were able to determine that the left wing of the small aircraft struck the hill first, followed by the nose; the plane then slid about 20 feet before exploding.

“Probably the fuel tanks ignited,” said Thomas Wilcox, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board. “On impact the wings were ruptured, spreading fuel over a wide area.”

Wilcox said it would be about a year before the NTSB released a final report on the cause of the crash.

Correspondent Christopher Pummer contributed to this article.