Posted on: Friday, June 14, 2002

Two from Hawai'i die in Arizona plane crash

By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer

Two longtime Hawai'i residents were killed Saturday in an airplane crash in Arizona after taking off in a plane that an FAA official had refused to fly in.

Kristin Lass, 30, and Michael Kellie, 44, were well- known in local yachting and canoe paddling circles.

Before moving back to the Mainland almost a year ago, Lass lived in Hawai'i for five years, working as a pilot for Voyager submarines and paddling and coaching at Waikiki Yacht Club.

Kellie, who moved here in 1978 from Washington state, lived in Makiki with his wife, Tomiko. He owned a boat repair firm at the Ala Wai Yacht Harbor.

Lass and Kellie were attending Accelerated Flight Crew Training school in Chandler, Ariz., where she was working for her commercial rating and he was trying to get his instructor's certificate.

Lass was acting as instructor to Kellie and student Sean Reidy, 29, of Scottsdale, when they flew Saturday from Chandler to Nogales so Kellie could take an in-flight examination for a new rating.

Tealeye Cornejo National Transportation Safety Board investigator said yesterday she is pursuing reports that one of the airplane's engines was not providing full power.

Cornejo said the FAA flight examiner who was going to test Kellie, Nogales Airport manager Larry Tiffin, told the NTSB that he had told the three that one of the two engines was not developing full power, and warned them not to fly.

Lass then telephoned a mechanic at the school in Chandler, but the mechanic told the NTSB that Lass said only that one engine was running hot and didn't mention a power problem with an engine, Cornejo said.

Lass' father, Richard Lass of Colorado, said Tiffin told him that Kristin Lass reported that the mechanic indicated it would be OK to fly the airplane, but not to "push it."

Cornejo said Kellie and Reidy were in the two front seats, where either could have been controlling the aircraft, and Lass was in the third seat.

Four minutes after takeoff, the twin-engine plane crashed and burst into flames near a small home about five miles from the airport.

Ron Dubois, a Waikiki yachtsman and pilot who was Kellie's longtime friend, said Kellie had about 800 hours of flying time, and worked for eight months for Pacific Wings.

"Mike was really trying to get out of the harbor, expand his horizons," he said.

Kellie's parents, Fred and Betty Kellie of Ha'ena, Kaua'i, said Michael, the youngest of their three sons, was meticulous about the safety of the planes he flew.

"I'm sure he was concerned about the condition of the aircraft," Fred Kellie said. "He was a mechanic."

Fred Kellie said he plans to come to O'ahu in July for a service for his son, but Betty Kellie said she will have to stay home to care for their daughter, who is disabled.

Kristin Lass' friends plan a memorial service for her July 6 to sprinkle her ashes off Magic Island, and are raising money through Kristin's friend Marla Kelly at Waikiki Yacht Club to bring the Lass family to Hawai'i for the service.

In Waikiki, fellow paddler and close friend Kelly Ahu said the news of Kristin Lass' death was announced at a canoe race at Ke'ehi Lagoon on Sunday, "and it spread like wildfire."

Richard Lass said he talked to his daughter a few hours before the flight, and that she told him they were delayed in Nogales because of a problem with the plane.

"And — I joke a lot — and I said, 'So I suppose you are going to try to fly it back and crash it.' It was the last thing I said to her."