Cessna crash report cites weather

Preliminary findings in the accident off Molokai include eyewitness accounts

A single-engine airplane with two men on board disappeared in bad weather off Molokai's Kalaupapa Peninsula last Thursday night, according to the National Transportation Safety Board's preliminary accident report.

A witness at Molokai's Kapailoa Point told investigators he saw the plane descend from the base of some thick clouds at a rapid rate with its airplane lights wobbling one over the other. He said he also heard the engine revving loudly. The witness said he assumed the airplane crashed after he saw the lights disappear behind a ridge line.

Before the plane's rapid descent, he and others said they heard a flash flood warning on the radio. The witness said it was very dark with thick clouds in the area and that it was raining. He said the weather had been clear earlier in the evening, but the rainy weather had moved in rapidly.

Joshua Tabisola, 25, and Jacob Jacob, 22, both of Waipahu, went down with the plane. Tabisola was a flight instructor for Anderson Aviation Inc., the owner of the Cessna 177B aircraft. Jacob was his student in a commercial pilot flight training program. They were on a nighttime cross-country training flight from Honolulu to Hana.

A memorial service for Tabisola will be held at 6 p.m. Aug. 15 in Chapel of Mystical Rose on the Saint Louis School/Chaminade University campus in Kaimuki.

According to Navy radar data, there were two lines of heavy rain over Molokai at the time of the airplane's disappearance.

The heavy clouds would have meant whoever was at the controls had to rely on his instrument readings rather than visual references to pilot the aircraft, said Nicole Charnon, NTSB investigator.

The plane's last recorded radar position was about five miles east of Kalaupapa Peninsula and about a mile off Molokai's North Shore cliffs. That was at 8:54 p.m.

The aircraft is believed to be under 300 feet of water.

With no wreckage, Charnon says all she has to rely on to determined what happened are the witness reports and the radar data.

She expects to determine sometime next week whether it was Jacob or Tabisola who received a weather briefing from the Honolulu flight service station before they left Honolulu and what was in that briefing.