FAA opens probe into private plane crash
By Timothy Hurley and Curtis Lum
Advertiser Staff Writers
A federal aviation investigator is in Hawai'i to determine what caused the crash of a single-engine plane on Moloka'i's rugged northeast coast, but must first find a way to remove the wreckage from a perilously steep ridge.
The body of the teenage pilot, 17-year-old Chezray Hayes, was recovered yesterday from the wreckage of the Cessna 172.
Nicole Charnon, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, is on special assignment in Hawai'i and was assigned to the case yesterday. She was unavailable for comment.
The wreckage of the Cessna, which had been missing since Saturday, was discovered by a Maui Fire Department helicopter at about 7:05 a.m. yesterday at the 1,500-foot level on Manuahi Ridge.
The Hayes family said last night that Maui officials told them the body was that of their son.
The rugged, forbidding terrain made recovery efforts extremely difficult. Maui Assistant Fire Chief Greg Chong Kee said a rescue crew of about 15 members arrived near the scene at 12:30 and cleared a landing area for the helicopter.
Firefighters then rappelled 400 feet down a 70-degree slope to get to the crash site, he said. The body, found in the wreckage, was recovered at about 4:50 p.m., Chong Kee said, and turned over to Maui police for positive identification.
Maui County Police Lt. Jon Morioka said an autopsy would be done, possibly today.
Hayes, an O'ahu teen with 30 hours of flight experience as a member of the Hawai'i Wing of the Civil Air Patrol, was flying solo from Honolulu to Maui on Saturday. He last checked in with Moloka'i airport officials at 12:15 p.m.
Hayes was a senior at Mililani High School. Principal Robert Ginlack said students today needed counseling to deal with the loss of their friend. The school announced today that Hayes had not survived the crash.
"The counselors are involved with a lot of kids who are not dealing with the situation very well," Ginlack said today. "They are being sent down from their classes."
Manuahi Ridge is within The Nature Conservancy's remote Pelekunu Preserve — 5,714 acres of wilderness that is home to one of Hawai'i's last remaining free-flowing streams.
Ed Misaki, the conservancy's Moloka'i preserve manager, said no conservation work is conducted on Manuahi Ridge because of its steepness, and the preserve is not open to the public because of its remote, rugged location.
"The chances of getting lost in that area is very real,'' he said.
Moloka'i's Walter Ritte regularly hunts in the island's backcountry and said Manuahi Ridge is used by hunters as a trail to descend into the valley from the island's interior. He described the ridge as so narrow at the top that there is room for only one person. "At the end it's straight downhill, and your knees start to ache,'' he said.
Ritte said he could recall standing at Ha'upu, a 1,022-foot point at the ocean end of the ridge, watching small planes fly below him.
The ridge, he said, has a propensity to be covered by mist and clouds, especially late in the day.
"I remember it being misty and cloudy that day,'' Ritte said of the day the plane was lost.
Aircraft recovery operations in the mountainous terrain of East Moloka'i are not new to Maui County rescue personnel.
On Nov. 1, 1996, a small plane carrying Maui Democratic Chairman Robert McCarthy, Councilman Tom Morrow and four others slammed into a ridge above Halawa Valley en route to Maui, killing everyone aboard.
On Oct. 28, 1989, 20 died, including eight from Moloka'i High School volleyball teams, when an Aloha Island Air flight crashed near Halawa Valley.
On July 21, 2000, operations took all day in the recovery of seven bodies from a tour helicopter that crashed in Maui's 'Iao Valley. The steep terrain was similar to that at Pelekunu, Chong Kee said.
