Among those who were travelling on the twin-engine Piper Cheyenne II was the 69-year-old director of Swiss customised prosthetics company Symbios, Jean Plé, also flying the plane.
Also on the doomed plane was a renowned orthopaedic surgeon to sport celebrities, Jean Pierre Franceschi, and his wife Nathalie.
Nothing has emerged as yet about the identity of the fourth person who was on the plane.
The aircraft crashed approximately 2,000 metres after take off, according to Portugal’s air crash investigation bureau (GPIAAF), into a Lidl supermarket unloading bay, in a populated residential area and just 150 metres away from a local primary school.
The fifth victim is a Portuguese lorry driver who was unloading goods into a Lidl docking bay when the plane crashed into the truck and burst into flames.
The incident, which left nine people homeless, happened around noon on Monday, shortly after the plane took off from Tires Aerodrome. It was reportedly en-route to Marseille, having arrived in Portugal last Friday from Geneva.
Portugal’s Civil Protection authority said “everything indicates there was an explosion mid-air”, although eyewitness reports that later emerged, described the aircraft as spiralling out of control before crashing and exploding into a ball of fire.
The GPIAAF expects to have a preliminary report into the crash complete within 30 days.
In a statement, Cascais Aerodrome confirmed that “at 11.05am local time, the flight of private operator Symbios Orthopedic, a P-31 light aircraft that had taken off from Cascais Aerodrome bound for Marseilles with three passengers and one crew member on board, suffered an accident outside the aerodrome airspace.
“The aerodrome immediately activated its emergency plans and in this way activated an internal and external response to this accident.”
Portugal’s President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa visited the scene.
The fire, caused after the plane crashed into buildings, was extinguished at around 2pm that afternoon, and Civil Protection officers finished combing through the debris at the site the following day.
Portugal’s government has said it will now await the findings in the GPIAAF’s report.