DENVER – A charter plane carrying NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol crashed and burst into flames during takeoff yesterday from a southwest Colorado airport, killing at least two people and seriously injuring Mr. Ebersol and one of his sons. Rescue crews were searching for another son.

Mr. Ebersol, 57, and son Charles Ebersol survived the crash at the Montrose Regional Airport outside this southwest Colorado town, NBC said in a statement through its Denver affiliate KUSA-TV.

Eyewitness Chuck Distel told The Associated Press by phone that Charles helped his father out through the front of the plane, which had its cockpit ripped off by the force of the crash.

The station said crews searched for Edward “Teddy” Ebersol, 14, by helicopter and on the ground. NBC said the plane seat was missing from the wreckage. Mr. Distel, who was driving on a highway that runs parallel to the runway, saw the plane as it skidded sideways off the runway, went through a fence and some brush before hitting a roadway that ripped the cockpit from the fuselage, leaving it an unrecognizable wreck separate from the aircraft.

An “older gentleman” with gray straight hair and a “younger gentleman with shorter, dark hair,” were walking around outside the wreckage as Mr. Distel and an airport official arrived at the scene.

“I had to think for a second, ‘who are these people?'” he said. “They weren’t severely injured, they were in shock.”

He said the older gentleman, whom he later identified as Mr. Ebersol from pictures showed to him by other reporters, didn’t say a word as the younger man cried and yelled “Oh my god, Oh my god!”

An airport official yelled into the aircraft looking for survivors, but heard none. The plane, which had left a burning trail of jet fuel, burst into flames that forced Mr. Distel and other rescuers away from the wreckage.

The younger man was able to climb into an ambulance while Mr. Ebersol was loaded onto a stretcher, Mr. Distel said. Montrose County Sheriff’s officials said two people were dead. The network said the victims were the pilot and co-pilot. No identities were re leased, but KUSA said Mr. Ebersol’s wife, actress Susan St. James, was not on the plane.

The crash occurred in an area covered with small brush and cedar trees near a large drainage ditch, a sheriff’s spokesman said. A weekend storm dumped more than 3 feet of snow in the area, but it was not known if weather was a factor in the crash.

The plane, registered to Jet Alliance of Millville, N.J., was on its way to South Bend, Ind., where Charles Ebersol attends the University of Notre Dame. Mr. Ebersol, who lives in Litchfield, Conn., became president of NBC Sports in 1989 and recently signed a contract that keeps him at the network through 2012.