The co-founder of a casket company that owns a small plane that crashed last week on a private Molokai airstrip also owned a tour company fined $50,000 by the Federal Aviation Administration after a 2006 critical crash in the same location involving the same make and model plane.

John Weiser Jr., whose company Tora Flight Adventures was penalized in 2007 by the FAA for transporting tourists in small airplanes from Honolulu to Panda Ranch on Molokai’s West End without proper certification, also co-founded Affordable Casket Outlet LLC, the registered owner of the plane that crashed Feb. 27.

The pilot who crashed the plane on Panda Ranch on Feb. 27 and failed to report it is the ranch’s owner and lives on Oahu, said a Maui police spokesman, who would not reveal the pilot’s name.

The twin-engine Partenavia P68 Observer involved in the Feb. 27 crash is owned by Affordable Casket, doing business as Affordable Casket and Moanalua Mortuary in Mapunapuna.

Weiser and Claus Hansen opened Affordable Casket in 1999, according to a Pacific Business News article, but Hansen is the only officer currently listed on the state’s online business registration site. Neither Hansen nor Weiser returned the Star-Advertiser’s calls.

FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said Tuesday in an email that a man found the damaged aircraft Saturday and alerted the FAA, and it was unknown whether the aircraft was taking off or landing.

County spokesman Rod Antone said the plane sustained light damage, no one was injured in the forced landing and no passengers were aboard the aircraft.

Molokai police were informed Monday, four days after the crash.

Two FAA investigators went to the crash site Tuesday to examine the aircraft, review its maintenance records, interview the pilot and speak to the man who discovered the plane, Gregor said.

On Wednesday, another FAA spokesman said the National Transportation Safety Board has taken the lead on the investigation.

Federal regulators require pilots to immediately report an accident to the NTSB, which will determine whether it was an accident or an incident.

In the April 30, 2006, crash, one person was critically injured and another seriously injured. The plane was carrying four Japanese visitors and the pilot.

Days before that crash, the FAA, which had been investigating complaints about the operation since 2003, sent a letter to Weiser’s company ordering it to cease operations because it lacked a Part 135 air taxi and commuter certificate. According to the 2007 NTSB report, the company had an attitude of non-compliance and disregard of safety, including aircraft being flown in an un-airworthy condition.

In 2009, Weiser, then 74, was piloting a twin-engine plane used for scattering ashes and made a hard landing at Honolulu Airport.