Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board have begun the painstaking process of deciphering what caused a charter plane to crash Wednesday moments after taking off from Lanai Airport, killing three people and injuring three others.
A duo of West Coast-based NTSB officials arrived Friday to inspect the wreckage at the crash scene, a grassy area about a mile southeast of the airport which once served as a pineapple field.
The twin-engine Piper Navajo Chieftain crashed at a low angle, leaving an approximately 500-foot debris field in the grasslands of central Lanai, according to investigators’ descriptions provided by NTSB spokesman Peter Knudson. The plane’s fuselage, which includes the cabin, was at the far end of the debris field, Knudson said.
The three killed in the Maui Air charter plane crash were the pilot, Richard "Dick" Rooney, and Maui County employees Kathleen Kern and Tremaine Balberdi.
In many of its investigations, the NTSB will review transmissions between the pilot and air traffic controllers for clues to what caused the crash. However, the airport on Lanai, a sparsely populated island, does not have an air traffic control tower. For Wednesday’s crash the agency has no record of transmissions between the pilot and air traffic controllers, Knudson said.
The pilot had filed what’s called a "visual flight rules" flight plan, where he could take off without the help of plane instrumentation, Knudson added.
Crews worked Friday to remove the plane’s engines from the crash scene and bring them to a separate site in the islands where they’ll be torn down for examination, Knudson said. The rest of the wreckage should be removed from the field for examination Saturday.
The NTSB investigators will likely wrap up their on-site work Saturday and stay on the island for several days, Knudson said. NTSB expects to have a preliminary report on the crash in the next 10 days.
Fatal crash investigations average about a year to complete, Knudson said. "There’s a lot of material to get to before we get to the probable cause," he said.
The NTSB’s investigation will include the pilot’s flight experience, medical history and background in the 72 hours leading up to the crash, as well as the plane’s maintenance history and the weather records at the time of the crash.
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Star-Advertiser reporter Dave Segal contributed to this report.
