Examination by the investigators of the wreckage of a small commercial plane that crashed in a former Lanai pineapple field last month revealed a 640-foot-long debris field, according to a preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The rented twin-engine Piper Navajo Chieftain was destroyed by fire after it crashed at 9:30 p.m. Feb. 26, killing Maui Air pilot Richard Rooney and two Maui Planning Department employees, Kathleen Kern, 50, and Tremaine Balberdi, 53.
Three Maui County employees survived. However, Douglas Miller, a planner with the Planning Department, and Mark King, a geographic information systems analyst with the department, suffered critical injuries and are still hospitalized.
Deputy Corporation Counsel James Giroux, who suffered serious injuries, was released. He is credited with pulling his colleagues from the burning wreckage.
The preliminary NTSB report released Tuesday does not include any determination of contributing factors or causes of the crash. Typically it takes the NTSB months to come up with a probable cause.
The 640-foot debris field stretched from the first point of contact to an engine component near the main wreckage.
The area where the plane hit the ground left a ground scar that stretched about 160 feet in length and about 1 foot wide.
The pilot had filed a "visual flight rules" flight plan, meaning he could take off without the help of plane instrumentation, the NTSB report said. The plane had just taken off for Kahului.
Maui County had chartered the flight to take the employees home after an evening meeting on Lanai.
Charred vegetation was observed about 100 feet down the ground scar from the first point of impact and fanned out on each side of the debris path for about 260 feet; it was about 50 feet in width at its widest point, the report said.
The majority of the wreckage was found in the last two-thirds of the debris field.
The crash site was in a remote area near the airport known as Miki Basin, which was reached only after a private contractor had used a bulldozer to create a makeshift road.
The Lanai incident was the second crash of a small plane within three months.
On Dec. 11, state Health Director Loretta Fuddy died after surviving the crash of a Makani Kai Cessna Grand Caravan just after it took off following an official visit to Kalaupapa.
An autopsy, conducted by Dr. Linsey Harle, said Fuddy, 65, died of acute cardiac arrhythmia due to hyperventilation.
Fuddy was one of nine people aboard the Cessna, which crashed into the ocean after takeoff about a half-mile from Kalaupapa. She was the only passenger to die.
