Plane crashes in Wai'alae Iki

By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer

Honolulu pilot Ryan Pettit, trying desperately to avoid children playing in a park as he made an emergency landing yesterday, crashed a Cessna 150 single-engine airplane into the backyard of a Wai'alae Iki home.

Firefighters and police responded after a single-engine Cessna crashed in a yard while trying to make an emergency landing at Wai'alae Iki park. Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser

He said he continued to avoid children as the aircraft bounced three times before sailing through a fence and into a tree in the backyard of a home at the diamondhead end of the field just before 6 p.m.

Pettit received a gash on the head, and passenger Gerhard Olssen, a student from Goteborg, Sweden, escaped the plane without a scratch.

"There was one spot where he could land, and he got it," Olssen said last night. "I never knew there were so many damned houses on O'ahu — but there was one green spot, and he got it. ... We could see the color of the children's clothes. I remember I saw somebody in pink.

"He actually thought of their safety before ours," Olssen added, "and I'm so glad now, because I would feel so bad if I made it and somebody else didn't."

Pettit tried to stop the plane at the end of the playing field of the park at Kalaniana'ole Highway and Anali'i Street, but tail winds sent him into the backyard of Robert Takamune's home on Anali'i Street.

"Everything went black, and I wondered for a moment if this was what dying was like," Olssen said. But then he saw light and felt heat and started struggling with his seat belt to get out.

Although the wing tanks were a quarter full, there was no fire.

Olssen said Pettit had invited him on the spur of the moment yesterday for a flight to Lana'i. The two had met in class at Hawai'i Pacific University, where Olssen is studying for his master's degree. Pettit said he had rented the plane from O'ahu Aviation.

Just offshore of Koko Head, at about 2,000 feet, the Cessna's single engine sputtered and died. Pettit got it started momentarily, then it died again.

Pettit radioed and got permission to make an emergency landing wherever he could.

"There was nothing but houses, except for this little postage stamp of a park," Olssen said. "But he found it and he put it down there."

Olssen, a student pilot, asked Pettit if there was something he could do to help.

"Just shut up and let me do my thing," Pettit replied.

Pettit saw the tree at the last minute, and chose to hit it rather than the house, Olssen said.

"I thought it was going to blow," he said. "I tried to get out and I couldn't as we crashed. I heard Ryan scream, 'Let's get out of here!' "

Capt. John Riddel, an Aloha Airlines pilot, saw the plane as he was driving on Kalaniana'ole Highway.

"We were heading townbound for dinner and we looked up and saw this Cessna two-passenger aircraft ... attempting to make this park, heading diamondhead-bound from Koko Head. It obviously was in trouble.

"They tried to make it into this park, but with the gusty tail wind he had behind him, he overshot and went through this guy's fence and into this guy's yard, hit this tree and flipped the airplane over. ...

"He ... was trying to get it down away from the kids playing soccer on this field. There were a few kids further down, just a few of them. So he did a hell of a job missing them and getting it down even in this general area."

Takamune, a retired life insurance salesman, was at home with his wife, Janet, when he heard a huge noise in his back yard.

"I didn't see anything, but I heard the crash, that's all, and then I came out and I saw two men. They crawled out really fast, you know. Maybe they thought it was going to burn."

"They just scampered out of the plane," his wife said. "One had a gash on his forehead that was bleeding. I just gave him a wet towel to put on it, and I gave him a bag of ice."

Firefighters and medical workers responded quickly and cordoned off the area.

An investigation was under way last night into the cause of the crash.