New audio: Pilot calm as engine fails
By Kristen Consillio
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KUNIA, Hawaii (KITV) — Calm and collected. That’s how a pilot sounded last Thursday when he was forced to make an emergency landing in Kunia.
In the moments that led up to that landing:
“We got an engine failure at 2,100. We’ll be landing on a field over here somewhere. Go straight to the airport, straight to the airport. Runway 8 left. I’m at 1,500. I don’t know if I can make it, shoots.”
In the audio clip, the pilot is calmly telling an air traffic controller about the engine failure as he searches for somewhere to land.
The air traffic controller jumped into action, trying to guide the pilot to several areas for a safe landing.
“I’m going to aim for the fields. Everybody else standby… Your discretion let me know where you want to put it down. There is a grass strip. Grass strip at Ford Island, right below you sir.”
The plane’s propeller fell off and cut through the roof of a home in Royal Kunia.
Last week, the homeowner said his wife narrowly escaped the danger.
Another Kunia resident, whose husband is a pilot, was in her yard and caught the plane on camera.
“My heart sank when I heard the engine start sputtering and I heard it stall. I know that that wasn’t a good sign and I know it’s really hard to recover from that,” said Kunia resident Krystal Kaaa. “So knowing that nobody got hurt, even though the propeller fell through the house, and that they were able to land safely and they were all okay. It’s literally a miracle.”
The two men on the plane, 22 and 38, were able to get out on their own.
The younger man taken in serious condition to a hospital, the older man had minor arm injuries.
“The flying itself is pretty manageable after a propeller falls off because what happens is just like after an engine fails, the airplane becomes a glider,” said aviation expert Peter Forman, a former pilot. “People land gliders all the time and so you just pick out a place to land. And in this case over Kunia there were a lot of agricultural fields and it worked out very well.”
At the end of the recording, the air traffic controller is relieved and grateful that the pilot and passenger survived after landing in the bushes.
“Got two souls on the aircraft, all ok, they gave me a thumbs up. Thank God. You said they are ok safe and sound on the ground is that right? They are safe and sound magnum 8.”
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