Posted at 10:48 a.m., Wednesday, July 24, 2002
Distress-call failure probed in Maui crash
Associated Press
WAILUKU, Hawai'i An emergency locator transmitter on the Cessna that crashed on Maui earlier this month was not connected to the battery and may have prevented search crews from receiving distress calls, authorities said.Tealeye Cornejo, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, said she found the battery disconnected from the transmitter, a device that is supposed to send off a distress signal if the plane crashes.
Search crews on July 15 located the wreckage the Cessna Cardinal 177 that was reported missing two days earlier. Two men and two girls aboard the plane were killed.
The plane was found nose down in Nahiku, about 200 yards on the mountain side of the Hana Highway.
Rescue airplanes and helicopters reported not being able to detect signals from the emergency locator transmitter.
Cornejo said she found the battery for the transmitter in the plane's cockpit.
Anton Stammberger, a former owner of the Cessna, said the emergency locator transmitter is within the tail section and could have ended up in the cockpit if it was not secured.
"The battery could have flown off the ELT," Stammberger said.
A preliminary examination found the airplane engine was working and capable of producing power, Cornejo said.
The cause of the crash has not yet been released, but a preliminary report should be available by the end of the week, NTSB officials said.
NTSB spokeswoman Lauren Peduzzi said investigators were still awaiting radar information to determine the exact route of the airplane, and a toxicological report on the pilot will take several weeks.
The pilot was identified as Steve Betsill of Maui. Betsill, 47, and three of his brothers co-own Betsill Brothers Construction Inc. on Maui.
He had gone up in the plane with a cousin, Jerry Betsill of Fort Worth, Texas, and his 10-year-old daughter, Emma, and niece Merideth Fennimore, 11, of Richardson, Texas, relatives said.
