scubabri
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http://www.mauinews.com/story.aspx?id=17678
Engine failure suspected
By LILA FUJIMOTO, Staff Writer KAHULUI – As he sat outside Da Kitchen restaurant at Triangle Square, Timothy Tate at first didn’t realize what he was seeing when a low-flying airplane headed toward the shopping center Wednesday night.
The twin-engine plane was 300 feet away, Tate estimated, when it veered sharply right, just clearing telephone wires as it swooped down toward the BMW of Maui lot adjacent to the shopping complex. “That’s when I finally realized this guy was in trouble and I was seeing the end of his flight, the last few seconds,” said Tate, who had been waiting for friends outside the restaurant. “I felt so deeply sad because I knew those people were going to die.”
The Wailuku resident said he believes the pilot made the turn, which was so sharp that it appeared the plane was vertical, to maneuver away from the crowded restaurant and other businesses in Triangle Square.
“He managed to save a lot of lives on the ground,” Tate said Friday. “I think the pilot did a great job of pulling away.
“It took a lot of courage. He was very brave because when he made that sharp turn, he knew he was going down. But he did it for a reason – to avoid all the people.”
All three Oahu residents aboard the Hawaii Air Ambulance Cessna 414A plane were killed in the 7:17 p.m. crash.
The victims were identified as pilot Peter A. Miller, 32, of Kailua; Brien P. Eisaman, 37, a registered nurse and assistant chief flight nurse, of Waipahu; and Marlena L. Yomes, 39, a paramedic and Honolulu base station supervisor, of Waianae.
Police said no injuries were reported on the ground. Twenty cars valued at about $500,000 that were parked in the lot of the closed BMW dealership were destroyed or damaged. Fire officials said it appeared the plane had clipped a car before landing on the asphalt. The car had a large dent on its trunk.
On Friday, the damaged cars along with the wreckage of the aircraft were moved off the car dealership lot.
But before the airplane was moved, federal investigators, along with representatives from the airplane and engine manufacturers, combed through the charred remains.
The plane had left Honolulu International Airport at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday and was heading to Kahului to pick up a patient. A preliminary Federal Aviation Administration report said the plane lost engine power on its approach to Kahului Airport.
One part of a plane propeller landed more than 12 feet from most of the wreckage.
Van McKenny, investigator in charge for the National Transportation Safety Board, said it was too soon to say whether a mechanical problem led to the crash.
“We do not know enough information on what the pilot was doing,” McKenny said Friday at the crash site.
He said he had requested radar data showing the path of the plane and tapes of communication between the pilot and airport tower.
“We’ve got to look at all the aspects of the investigation,” McKenny said.
He expected to complete his examination at the scene today before going to Honolulu to examine records of the aircraft. He said a final report on the crash was expected to take six months to one year.
McKenny said he was aware of an earlier incident involving another plane that Miller had been piloting.
A student pilot was aboard the private Piper Apache twin-engine plane with Miller, a certified flight instructor, when one engine shut down before the plane veered off the runway during the landing July 1 at Honolulu International Airport, according to preliminary information from the NTSB. No one was injured.
No enforcement action was taken against Miller in that incident, said Mike Fergus, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration in Seattle.
“There’s nothing derogatory about the pilot,” Fergus said.
Miller had been with Hawaii Air Ambulance for less than a year, but had “extensive” experience and grew up in a family of commercial pilots, which included both his father and brother, said Andrew Kluger, chief executive officer of the company. Miller was single.
Along Hana Highway fronting the crash site Friday, charred pieces of a Hawaii Air Ambulance flight manual mixed with flowers and lei. “You were a hoot Peter,” read a note left with what appeared to be a grade-school photo of the pilot.
Haiku resident Sage Spalding, who knew Miller from his days of surfing off Windward Oahu, stopped to leave flowers.
When he heard about the crash, “I was thinking, ’Oh, no, I hope it’s not the Peter Miller I know,’’’ said Spalding, who called a friend to learn it was.
“I didn’t know him well enough to know he was a pilot,” Spalding said. “I would just see him surfing usually. He was always this super, super nice guy.”
Yomes, the paramedic on the plane, was described as a longtime employee who had stuck with the company when others were afraid to fly after a January 2004 Hawaii Air Ambulance crash on the Big Island that killed the pilot and two paramedics.
“She took up the slack,” said former Hawaii Air Ambulance pilot Cary Mendes. “She worked lots and lots of overtime through that crisis.”
He described her as a straight talker who loved to laugh.
“She was very humorous, boisterous – a larger-than-life personality at the company,” he said.
Eisaman, the nurse who was single, had been with the company for about a year.
Mendes said the crash occurred as the plane was making its final turn before coming in to land – “the classic location for a stall spin.”
If a large plane had been landing ahead of it, the little Cessna could have been rocked by wake turbulence, Mendes said.
And if equipment malfunctioned, the approach to the landing is where it would become a problem, he said.
“You’re dropping the landing gear, you’re putting down flaps,” Mendes said. “If something is unusual mechanically, that’s a location when you’re doing changes.”
But Mendes was skeptical that an engine failure was to blame, saying a pilot so close to the runway could probably glide in. “You don’t need a lot of power at that point,” he said.
Kelly Moore, a pilot who used to fly twin-engine planes, said he was at his business on Papa Place in the Kahului industrial area when he heard the plane fly over his shop Wednesday night.
“I thought it was going through my roof,” he said.
Moore said the plane sounded like a twin engine with only one engine in full power.
He saw the plane go from the front to the back of his building before making a 180-degree turn and head toward Hana Highway. “I thought the plane was going to crash,” Moore said.
“My suspicion is he was probably turning to get away from all the houses and businesses and make it to the (Kanaha) pond,” he said. “It was a huge ball of fire when it hit.”
When the plane hit the ground, “it exploded on impact,” Tate said.
“Heat from that fireball actually hit me,” said Tate, who took cover behind a concrete pillar. People ran out of Da Kitchen, many calling 911.
“I think everybody knew that the people did not survive,” he said. “That was the saddest part. There’s nothing you could do about it.”
Tate said fire trucks arrived within three to four minutes, followed by police.
Four to five minutes after the crash, he heard a second explosion that he later learned was an oxygen tank aboard the plane.
“I give the Fire Department credit – they were there fast and they had the truck right up there by the explosion,” Tate said. “They moved real fast to keep the fire from spreading.”
After staying home from work Thursday, Tate returned that night to Triangle Square.
“I felt fearful just going back there,” he said. “I had to go sit in that chair again and look up. I had to go back and see it one more time.”
Staff Writers Ilima Loomis and Melissa Tanji contributed to this story. Lila Fujimoto can be reached at [email protected].
Engine failure suspected
By LILA FUJIMOTO, Staff Writer KAHULUI – As he sat outside Da Kitchen restaurant at Triangle Square, Timothy Tate at first didn’t realize what he was seeing when a low-flying airplane headed toward the shopping center Wednesday night.
The twin-engine plane was 300 feet away, Tate estimated, when it veered sharply right, just clearing telephone wires as it swooped down toward the BMW of Maui lot adjacent to the shopping complex. “That’s when I finally realized this guy was in trouble and I was seeing the end of his flight, the last few seconds,” said Tate, who had been waiting for friends outside the restaurant. “I felt so deeply sad because I knew those people were going to die.”
The Wailuku resident said he believes the pilot made the turn, which was so sharp that it appeared the plane was vertical, to maneuver away from the crowded restaurant and other businesses in Triangle Square.
“He managed to save a lot of lives on the ground,” Tate said Friday. “I think the pilot did a great job of pulling away.
“It took a lot of courage. He was very brave because when he made that sharp turn, he knew he was going down. But he did it for a reason – to avoid all the people.”
All three Oahu residents aboard the Hawaii Air Ambulance Cessna 414A plane were killed in the 7:17 p.m. crash.
The victims were identified as pilot Peter A. Miller, 32, of Kailua; Brien P. Eisaman, 37, a registered nurse and assistant chief flight nurse, of Waipahu; and Marlena L. Yomes, 39, a paramedic and Honolulu base station supervisor, of Waianae.
Police said no injuries were reported on the ground. Twenty cars valued at about $500,000 that were parked in the lot of the closed BMW dealership were destroyed or damaged. Fire officials said it appeared the plane had clipped a car before landing on the asphalt. The car had a large dent on its trunk.
On Friday, the damaged cars along with the wreckage of the aircraft were moved off the car dealership lot.
But before the airplane was moved, federal investigators, along with representatives from the airplane and engine manufacturers, combed through the charred remains.
The plane had left Honolulu International Airport at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday and was heading to Kahului to pick up a patient. A preliminary Federal Aviation Administration report said the plane lost engine power on its approach to Kahului Airport.
One part of a plane propeller landed more than 12 feet from most of the wreckage.
Van McKenny, investigator in charge for the National Transportation Safety Board, said it was too soon to say whether a mechanical problem led to the crash.
“We do not know enough information on what the pilot was doing,” McKenny said Friday at the crash site.
He said he had requested radar data showing the path of the plane and tapes of communication between the pilot and airport tower.
“We’ve got to look at all the aspects of the investigation,” McKenny said.
He expected to complete his examination at the scene today before going to Honolulu to examine records of the aircraft. He said a final report on the crash was expected to take six months to one year.
McKenny said he was aware of an earlier incident involving another plane that Miller had been piloting.
A student pilot was aboard the private Piper Apache twin-engine plane with Miller, a certified flight instructor, when one engine shut down before the plane veered off the runway during the landing July 1 at Honolulu International Airport, according to preliminary information from the NTSB. No one was injured.
No enforcement action was taken against Miller in that incident, said Mike Fergus, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration in Seattle.
“There’s nothing derogatory about the pilot,” Fergus said.
Miller had been with Hawaii Air Ambulance for less than a year, but had “extensive” experience and grew up in a family of commercial pilots, which included both his father and brother, said Andrew Kluger, chief executive officer of the company. Miller was single.
Along Hana Highway fronting the crash site Friday, charred pieces of a Hawaii Air Ambulance flight manual mixed with flowers and lei. “You were a hoot Peter,” read a note left with what appeared to be a grade-school photo of the pilot.
Haiku resident Sage Spalding, who knew Miller from his days of surfing off Windward Oahu, stopped to leave flowers.
When he heard about the crash, “I was thinking, ’Oh, no, I hope it’s not the Peter Miller I know,’’’ said Spalding, who called a friend to learn it was.
“I didn’t know him well enough to know he was a pilot,” Spalding said. “I would just see him surfing usually. He was always this super, super nice guy.”
Yomes, the paramedic on the plane, was described as a longtime employee who had stuck with the company when others were afraid to fly after a January 2004 Hawaii Air Ambulance crash on the Big Island that killed the pilot and two paramedics.
“She took up the slack,” said former Hawaii Air Ambulance pilot Cary Mendes. “She worked lots and lots of overtime through that crisis.”
He described her as a straight talker who loved to laugh.
“She was very humorous, boisterous – a larger-than-life personality at the company,” he said.
Eisaman, the nurse who was single, had been with the company for about a year.
Mendes said the crash occurred as the plane was making its final turn before coming in to land – “the classic location for a stall spin.”
If a large plane had been landing ahead of it, the little Cessna could have been rocked by wake turbulence, Mendes said.
And if equipment malfunctioned, the approach to the landing is where it would become a problem, he said.
“You’re dropping the landing gear, you’re putting down flaps,” Mendes said. “If something is unusual mechanically, that’s a location when you’re doing changes.”
But Mendes was skeptical that an engine failure was to blame, saying a pilot so close to the runway could probably glide in. “You don’t need a lot of power at that point,” he said.
Kelly Moore, a pilot who used to fly twin-engine planes, said he was at his business on Papa Place in the Kahului industrial area when he heard the plane fly over his shop Wednesday night.
“I thought it was going through my roof,” he said.
Moore said the plane sounded like a twin engine with only one engine in full power.
He saw the plane go from the front to the back of his building before making a 180-degree turn and head toward Hana Highway. “I thought the plane was going to crash,” Moore said.
“My suspicion is he was probably turning to get away from all the houses and businesses and make it to the (Kanaha) pond,” he said. “It was a huge ball of fire when it hit.”
When the plane hit the ground, “it exploded on impact,” Tate said.
“Heat from that fireball actually hit me,” said Tate, who took cover behind a concrete pillar. People ran out of Da Kitchen, many calling 911.
“I think everybody knew that the people did not survive,” he said. “That was the saddest part. There’s nothing you could do about it.”
Tate said fire trucks arrived within three to four minutes, followed by police.
Four to five minutes after the crash, he heard a second explosion that he later learned was an oxygen tank aboard the plane.
“I give the Fire Department credit – they were there fast and they had the truck right up there by the explosion,” Tate said. “They moved real fast to keep the fire from spreading.”
After staying home from work Thursday, Tate returned that night to Triangle Square.
“I felt fearful just going back there,” he said. “I had to go sit in that chair again and look up. I had to go back and see it one more time.”
Staff Writers Ilima Loomis and Melissa Tanji contributed to this story. Lila Fujimoto can be reached at [email protected].
