The National Transportation Safety Board is awaiting the wreckage to determine the cause of a deadly plane crash in the Waianae Mountains above Kunia that killed the pilot and three passengers.
Four bodies were discovered late Saturday afternoon at the wreckage of the Beech 19A, manufactured in 1969. Dean Hutton, 29, was flying the four-seater, which belonged to Jahn Mueller, owner of Aircraft Maintenance and Flight School Hawaii. Mueller is responsible for recovering the wreckage.
Gerrit Evensen, a 28-year-old Punahou alumnus; his girlfriend, Heather Riley, 27; and Alexis Aaron, 32, were the passengers.
The foursome took off from Daniel K. Inouye International Airport for a sunset flight Friday but never returned. Friends and family reported them missing Saturday morning after discovering that their car was still parked at Lagoon Drive.
A Coast Guard helicopter spotted the wreckage Saturday afternoon in a heavily forested area near the Palikea and Pohakea Pass trails. The site was so treacherous that Honolulu Fire Department workers had to rappel from a helicopter to the mountainside to recover the victims.
Terry Williams, NTSB spokesman, said Monday that investigators will travel to Hawaii after the plane is recovered. They likely will spend two to three days gathering facts, Williams said.
“We’ll be documenting the aircraft and looking at things like the pilot’s records, the maintenance logs and the weather. We look for those things in most accident investigations,” he said. “A preliminary report will be ready about a week after the wreckage is recovered.”
Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said Monday that FAA has inspectors in Hawaii; however, NTSB is the lead agency in aircraft accident investigations. Gregor said NTSB typically posts a preliminary report within a week to 10 days after an accident but that “it typically takes the NTSB months if not more than a year to determine a probable cause.”
According to FAA records, Hutton in May obtained his private pilot’s certification, which requires only
40 hours of flying time. Hutton’s uncle Scott Potwin said Saturday that his nephew had amassed 170 hours. Potwin said his nephew had flown quite a few times in the past couple of weeks but that the plane he rented had problems.
“The last time he was out in it, it lost all power, communications. The same plane,” Potwin told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
Mueller said Sunday that the single-engine plane had an alternator problem when he rented it to Hutton about three weeks ago. He says the alternator was fixed.
FAA records confirm that Mueller also was the owner of the single-engine Piper PA298 airplane that crash-landed beneath the Moanalua Freeway on June 30, seriously injuring three people.
