HILO — The pilot of a plane that crash-landed April 19 in an Ookala corn field told an inspector that the engine had a 75 percent loss of power shortly before the plane went down.
The details were contained in a preliminary report filed Friday with the National Transportation Safety Board. The 68-year-old pilot and sole occupant of the Skykits Savannah, a light-sport aircraft, was taken to North Hawaii Community Hospital and then to The Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu.
According to the report, the plane departed from Hilo Airport around 9 a.m. the day of the crash and flew northwest along the coast, landing at Upolu Airport at the northern tip of the island.
Upon landing at Upolu, the pilot spent “a few minutes” there, without exiting the plane, and then took off again, headed back down the coast.
In the course of the cruise, the engine decreased to “about 25 percent” of its normal cruise power, and the pilot didn’t recall anything that happened after that. The engine was a Rotax 912 ULS with a maximum output of about 95 horsepower.
The NTSB report notes that two witnesses working at a dairy farm heard the airplane fly overhead:
“One noticed that the engine did not sound right, saw the airplane descending, and believed it was going to crash.”
They got in a car to follow it and lost sight; shortly after they found that the plane had landed in the field.
“On reaching the wreckage, they saw that the pilot was seriously injured, and telephoned 911 for assistance,” the report says, placing the time of impact at 10:39 a.m.
An inspector from the Federal Aviation Administration noted that the impact bent all three of the landing gear, so that the fuselage rested on the ground. The aircraft was largely intact, but the propeller was shattered.
The left fuelt tank was about two-thirds full, but the right tank was compromised and contained very little fuel.
The pilot had flight experience of 596 hours, including 548 hours in the damaged airplane. A full investigation into the cause of the engine failure may take months to be released.