The single-engine plane that crashed in the Waianae Mountains above Kunia, killing all four people aboard, had engine trouble the last time the pilot took it up, according to a relative of the pilot.

Scott Potwin, whose nephew, Dean Hutton, was flying the fixed-wing four-seater, said Saturday that the pilot had amassed 170 hours of flying time.

“He had been doing it quite a few times in the last couple of weeks,” Potwin said. “But the plane he rented had problems, it’s got problems. The last time he was out in it, it lost all power, communications. The same plane.”

The bodies were discovered late Saturday afternoon at the wreckage of the Beech 19A, manufactured in 1969. A spokeswoman for Lyssa Chapman, from TV’s “Dog the Bounty Hunter,” identified the other three victims as Chapman’s friend, Gerrit Evensen, a 28-year-old Punahou alumnus, his girlfriend, Heather Riley, 27, and Alexis Aaron.

The four took off from Daniel K. Inouye International Airport for a sunset flight Friday but never returned. Chapman and Lei Evensen, Gerrit Evensen’s sister, reported the foursome as missing after discovering their car on Lagoon Drive Saturday.

Hutton last communicated with air traffic control at 6:37 p.m. Friday, according to Mona Wood-Sword, spokeswoman for Chapman, who is the daughter of Duane “Dog” Chapman. Family members didn’t realize they were missing until Saturday since they didn’t live together, Wood-Sword said.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Allen Kenitzer said the “round-robin pleasure flight” crashed under “unknown circumstances.” The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate, Kenitzer said.

According to the FAA’s registration site, the plane was owned by John P. Mue­ller, who owns Aircraft Maintenance and Flight School Hawaii on Lagoon Drive. Mueller did not return a call to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Saturday.

FAA records confirm that he was also the owner of the single-engine Piper PA298 airplane that crash-landed beneath Moanalua Freeway June 30, seriously injuring three people. That plane was registered to Jahn P. Mueller, but the post office boxes on the FAA site were the same.

Kenitzer said he could not comment on the results of that investigation.

Petty Officer 3rd Class Amanda Levasseur, spokeswoman for the 14th Coast Guard District, said this latest crash report came from Honolulu airport at 10 a.m. Saturday and the Coast Guard deployed its MH-65 Dolphin helicopter from Barbers Point.

Battalion Chief Craig Uchimura said the Honolulu Fire Department was alerted at about 3 p.m. by the Coast Guard that its helicopter had found the wreckage in a heavily forested area below the ridgeline of the Waianae Mountains above the Kunia farm lots. It was near the Palikea and Pohakea Pass trails.

“The wreckage was in an area that was very remote and inaccessible,” Uchimura said. “Our rescue personnel had to rappel off of our Air 1 helicopter to be inserted into the mountainside. It’s pretty treacherous up there. We would be unable to get up there by vehicle, much less by foot.”

The Honolulu Fire Department responded with seven companies and 21 personnel. A base was set up at Hawaii Country Club on Kunia Road in Wahiawa.

Family members and friends consoled each other behind a police cordon. Two women put their hands to their faces and doubled over in grief when they learned the news.

The Fire Department’s Air 1 helicopter ferried the bodies from the crash site, one at a time, wrapped in blue tarp and dangling on a stretcher below the helicopter. They were met by family members and the staff of the Honolulu Medical Examiner’s Office.

None of the relatives or friends spoke to the media except Potwin, who crossed the cordon to get something from his car, and spoke briefly to the Star-Advertiser.

“I said goodbye to him right before they went to the airport,” Potwin said, before recounting his nephew’s experience with the plane.

Uchimura said the men have been positively identified, but official identification of the women is pending notification of kin.

“The families are understandably distraught” and are asking for the public’s prayers, Wood-Sword said in a statement.

Evensen, a Kaneohe resident, had recently opened his own business, Hawaii Ecological Landscape Design. His sweetheart Riley also was an entrepreneur who owned Hawaii Design Studios and was a director at Blue+Green Innovations.

“All of them were wonderful, conscious, compassionate, young people in the prime of their lives,” Amber Ricci wrote on Evensen’s Facebook page, referring to him, Aaron and Riley.

“Alexis was an absolutely gorgeous woman and I photographed her fire dancing at an event … I found her to be very sweet and kind,” Ricci wrote in her post.

Riley believed in making life count. She wrote in her “Facebook Intro”: “I am passionate, motivated, and dedicated to making a positive impact on the world.”

In one of her last Facebook posts dated July 26, Riley wrote, “Life is too short to lead a miserable and unfulfilling existence.”

On Monday, she gave a shout-out to Evensen: “I’m so proud of my love for pursuing his passion and starting his own business, Hawaii Ecological Landscape Design! His vast horticultural knowledge paired with a sustainable and creative approach to landscape design is truly unique.”

He replied, “You’re my inspiration honey!! Couldn’t have done this without you, thank you for pursuing me to follow my heart, my passion, my dreams. Excited for what’s to come.”