Wrong turn led WAILUKU >> The student pilot who died last month in a plane crash on Lanai made a left descending turn instead of turning right as instructed, his flight instructor Matthew McGurk told a federal investigator.
to fatal plane
crash on Lanai
The flight instructor tells
investigators the student pilot
turned left instead of right
as was instructedBy Gary Kubota
gkubota@starbulletin.com"That got them into clouds," said Tealeye Cornejo, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board.
Cornejo said that McGurk said he tried to recover the airplane from the wrong turn but it hit the ground.
The crash on Lanai on the night of June 14 killed student pilot Matthew Monczynski, 23, a Navy aircraft electronics technician based in Kaneohe.
Cornejo said Monczynski had 10 to 15 hours, perhaps a little more, of flying solo and was flying from Oahu to fulfill a requirement for night flight.
The interview with McGurk was delayed until he recover ed from two fractured ankles he suffered in the accident.
The Piper Cherokee PA 28-140, owned by Jahn Mueller of Mueller Aviation in Honolulu, crashed on a plateau about 1,700 feet above sea level, 412 miles northwest of Lanai Airport. Cornejo said there did not seem to be anything wrong with the aircraft.
Coast Guard rescuers found Monczynski's body and McGurk, injured but alive, early the next morning.