Air ambulance missing on trip to Big Island
By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer
A search resumes this morning for a Cessna air ambulance with a pilot and two flight paramedics that was reported missing early yesterday while en route from O'ahu to pick up a 9-year old patient in Hilo, Hawai'i.
VILLIAROS
Airplane and helicopter search teams from the Coast Guard, Civil Air Patrol, the Hawai'i Air National Guard and the Hawai'i Fire Department scoured a wide swath of the Big Island throughout the morning and afternoon, but found no trace of the missing aircraft by the time the hunt was called off about an hour after sundown.
"The search is mostly over land, but it's also over the coastline as well so that includes the water," said Lt. Danny Shaw, with the U.S. Coast Guard command center in Honolulu. "It goes all the way back to the middle of the island that's framed by Mauna Kea. So it's a huge area. We don't know where he went down."
He said the rescue effort would continue at first light today.
According to Coast Guard data, the last positive FAA radar identification of the Cessna was approximately 20 miles south east of 'Upolu Point on the Big Island at 1:29 a.m.
Dr. Mitchel Rosenfeld, medical director for Hawai'i Air Ambulance, which owns the missing plane, said at an afternoon media briefing that the flight was supposed to arrive in Hilo to pick up the child at 1:50 a.m.
"Unfortunately, they were overdue and we have not yet heard from that flight," said Rosenfeld. "We're obviously all very concerned."
Rosenfeld declined to name any of the three people on board out of respect for the relatives and friends of the pilot and two flight paramedics on board. He said the patient, who was never aboard the missing plane, was later taken to Honolulu by a military medical evacuation flight.
However, a relative who asked that her name not be used because the search is still under way, said one of the paramedics is Joseph "Danny" Villiaros, a firefighter with the Honolulu Fire Department. The other paramedic was identified as Mandy Shiraki, an Emergency Medical Services district chief.
Hawai'i Air Ambulance has been in business for 25 years in Hawai'i and, according to a company statement, had not had an accident in some 32,000 flights. HAA president Michael Yamamoto said the company would continue its usual operations.
Rebecca Breyer • The Honolulu Advertiser
Shaw said the Coast Guard received word at 3:01 a.m. yesterday that the Cessna 414 Chancellor airplane was missing. The Coast Guard then sent a C-130 Hercules aircraft and a Dolphin helicopter to search for the missing plane. Aircraft from the Civil Air Patrol, the Hawai'i Fire Department and the Hawai'i Air National Guard joined the search.
Hawai'i Air Ambulance officials Michael Yamamoto, Dr. Mitchel Rosenfeld and Stephen Henley discussed the disappearance from radar early yesterday of an ambulance flight to the Big Island.
According to Shaw, there was no distress call from the Cessna before it dropped off the radar screen. He said the air ambulance was scheduled to fly to 'Upolu Point and then on to the Hilo airport but never reached its destination. He also said the plane took a different than usual flight path.
Shaw said under normal circumstances air ambulance pilots fly between 9,500 and 9,800 feet from 'Upolu Point along the coast to Hilo.
"They were at 5,900 feet," he said. "We don't know why."
Shaw said the weather conditions were poor and there's a possibility the plane might have been blown off course.
Reach Will Hoover at 525-8038 or at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.
