| This story has been clarified. See below. |
Documents recently released by the National Transportation Safety Board shed dramatic light on a 2013 emergency landing in Wahiawa.
On Aug. 27, 2013, a fixed-wing, single-engine plane landed in a field near Wheeler Army Airfield, following a sudden loss of engine power. The aircraft flipped as it landed, seriously injuring passenger Richard Crousore. Pilot Jeffrey Smith sustained minor injuries.
In a written statement released as part of the accident docket, Smith explained that he and Crousore had made arrangements to practice "stalls, spins and other maneuvers" in his American Champion 8KCAB aircraft.
The two men shared the controls at different points during the late-afternoon flight. After performing 360-degree steep turns, power-on and off stalls, and left and right rolls, Smith performed an "Immelman" turn (an ascending half loop followed by a half roll that returns the plane to level flight at a higher altitude).
"We rolled out of the Immelman and did a 180-degree turn to the north," Smith explained in his statement. "The engine suddenly and unexpectedly coughed one time and then lost all power."
Smith tried several times to restart the engine but to no avail.
He then alerted the control tower at Wheeler that he intended to make an emergency landing there. However, Smith said, he soon realized that the plane would not be able to make it to the runway.
Instead, Smith identified a plowed field ahead and decided to land there.
"We landed tail wheel low and parallel to the plowed furrows," Smith wrote. "The tail wheel touched down but as the (front wheels) touched down, they hit the soft dirt and a clump of plowed grass and the plane immediately flipped over one time on its back and stopped."
Hanging upside down inside the plane, the two men struggled to escape.
"(Crousore) said he smelled fuel and began working frantically to extricate himself from the harness and parachute," Smith recalled. "I was twisted sideways, was unable to get loose because either the shoulder harness or the parachute strap had crossed my throat and was strangling me; I simply could not breathe and could not find the release clips for the lap belts or the parachute."
Crousore kicked out a window, exited the plane and then dragged Smith out through the window by the back of his pants.
Subsequent examination of the plane by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector did not reveal any abnormalities.
A display unit from the plane was sent to the NTSB Vehicle Recorder Division in Washington, D.C. However, a review of the data contained in the unit was deemed unreliable.
The NTSB has not yet identified a probable cause of the accident.
CLARIFICATION
The passenger in the single-engine plane that made an emergency landing in a Wahiawa field on Aug. 27, 2013, was a licensed pilot. Also, the American Champion 8KCAB aircraft was designed for aerobatic manuevers, such as the ones being practiced before the plane’s engine failed. The previous version of this article did not include this information.
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