Pilot dies in crash near Hale'iwa
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
A 39-year-old Honolulu man was killed this afternoon when the single-seat airplane he was flying crashed in a taro field on the North Shore.
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser
Emergency workers and investigators said the man, Ronald Haenel, pilot and mechanic at Kamaka Air Inc., had been flying a very small, home-built, one-propeller aircraft.
Investigators examine the wreckage of a small plane that crashed near Hale'iwa today, killing the pilot.
He was dead when rescuers arrived at the crash sight shortly after 1 p.m.
Firefighters said the plane looked like it had crashed nose-first into a dry taro field off Farrington Highway, 2 miles from the Dillingham Air Field.
Haenel was thrown from the plane. The wreckage did not catch fire.
Rollo Royle, an air traffic advisor who works in the tower at Dillingham, said Haenel came to the airfield in the late morning and did a couple of touch-and-go takeoffs and landings.
At 12:46, Haenel took off for Honolulu with another man piloting an escort plane alongside.
Eleven minutes later, the escort pilot radioed Royle. Haenel's plane had gone down.
Honolulu police and federal officials investigated today.
Tweet Coleman, the Federal Aviation Administration's Pacific representative, said the Los Angeles office of the National Transportation and Safety Board was notified of the crash, but that because the craft was an experimental airplane, it will be investigated by the FAA in Honolulu.
Coleman said the man had filed a flight plan indicating he was on his way to Honolulu airport. She said he experienced mechanical difficulties shortly after takeoff, and had turned to return to Dillingham.
He was two miles from the air field when his homemade airplane, a 1972 Jodel D9, spun in, she said.
