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Faulty, $5 gasket
may have led to
Big Island crash

The NTSB wants oil filter
gaskets replaced every 50 hours of
flying time on such engines

---

By Frankie Stapleton
Special to the Star-Bulletin

HILO -- The National Transportation Safety Board is calling for an emergency airworthiness directive for aircraft with engines similar to the ones on the Piper Navajo Chieftain that crashed Friday off the Hilo coast.

The agency is asking the Federal Aviation Administration to require all owners of such aircraft, not just tour operators, to have the engines' oil filter gaskets removed and replaced every 50 hours of flying time.

The faulty seal involves a gasket that "probably costs about $5," according to one crash investigator. The part may have led to an oil leak that caused the twin-engine Big Island Air plane's right engine to lose power and catch fire before the crash.

NTSB investigator Robert Crispin said last night that two accidents, including Friday's crash, are among 10 incidents worldwide that prompted the NTSB's request.

Crispin said the problem, which could affect 2,100 aircraft engines, was first identified in late 1998. He added that the cause of last September's crash of a similar Big Island Air plane on Mauna Loa was not related to the oil seal problems. That crash killed the pilot and his nine passengers.

A 61-year-old Oklahoma woman, Laveta Rose Reynolds, died following Friday's forced water landing of the 10-seater airplane belonging to Big Island Air. Pilot Nicholas Damis, 33, of Kailua-Kona, and seven other passengers were rescued after the pilot ditched the plane in the ocean northwest of Hilo Bay about 5:30 p.m. near Hilo's popular Honolii surfing spot.

Damis reported the aircraft's nose was moving to the right about 20 minutes into the flight from Keahole Airport, indicating fuel problems.

Investigators said passengers then alerted the pilot to the fire coming through the louvers of the right engine, causing Damis to shut down the faulty engine, hit the booster pump and switch fuel tanks.

"The shutdown procedures didn't correct the problem and the prop didn't feather, which added to the drag and the pilot couldn't maintain altitude," Crispin told a gathering of Hilo's Civil Air Patrol.

The plane, which had been flying at an altitude of about 1,000 feet, began dropping 50 feet a minute, he said. The pilot, recognizing he would not be able to make it to Hilo Airport, told the passengers to prepare for a water landing, put on their life vests and assume crash positions.

Although there was no panic, the response from the tour's eight passengers varied from one extreme to the other, according to the crash investigation team. One male passenger was calm enough to take his shoes off and put them under his seat, remove his hat and headset and figure out before the crash the best way to exit the aircraft.

Another male passenger put his life vest on over the wiring to his headset and got tangled in gear and wiring as he tried to get out of the sinking plane.

The pilot, slowing the aircraft, lowered the flaps, and the plane hit the water, Crispin said; the blow momentarily stunned the pilot and his front-seat passenger.

The impact ripped open the plane's Fiberglas nose, and the cabin quickly filled with water as as the people tried to get out of two exits, Crispin said; water pressure against the plane prevented the use of a third exit on the right side of the aircraft.

"Sixty seconds after landing, the aircraft sank in 80 feet of water," he said.

Reynolds, whose husband, Jim, 64, survived the crash, had inflated her life vest inside the plane. "That made her extra buoyant and her exit now was below the level of the water," Crispin said. Her body was found near the forward door.

The investigation is expected to be completed in six to nine months.