Home-built airplane
crashes off KauaiThe pilot is safe and in good
condition after being rescued
by the Coast Guard
A 56-year-old Hawaiian Airlines pilot was rescued with a few minor cuts and bruises after crashing his home-built plane into the ocean yesterday about 25 miles southeast of Lihue.
"He was in pretty good shape," Coast Guard helicopter pilot Lt. Kevin Quilliam said. "He was ecstatic he was rescued, and he was talking."
Bob Justman's Van's Aircraft RV-8 was at 1,000 feet at 8:52 a.m. on the way to Lihue from Honolulu when he radioed the Honolulu air traffic control center his engine had lost power and that he was going down, according to Justman and state transportation and Coast Guard officials.
Justman ditched the plane 60 miles from Oahu and made his last call at 200 feet, he said, adding that the air traffic control center had him on radar all the while.
"After impact the canopy closed and the aircraft inverted underwater, trapping me in the cockpit," Justman said in a written statement. "I released my shoulder harness and seat belt and worked at opening the canopy while underwater for over a minute.
"Miraculously, the canopy partially opened ... and I was able to eject myself from the cockpit just before the aircraft sank," he said.
Justman said he swam around collecting wreckage to make himself more visible and started splashing when the Coast Guard helicopter made its second pass.
COURTESY MAC LANZAS
Hawaiian Airlines pilot Bob Justman poses with his wife and the plane that crashed into waters off Kauai yesterday.
A Coast Guard HH-65 Dolphin helicopter was already in the air near Barbers Point when the emergency call came in at 8:55 a.m. The helicopter and a C-130 plane from Coast Guard Air Station Barbers Point were dispatched to the crash site.
A Coast Guard rescue crew spotted Justman but saw no sign of the plane.
"He had a very small piece of wreckage to wave to get our attention, and he was treading water," Quilliam said.
The helicopter flew Justman to Lihue Airport, where he was taken by ambulance to Wilcox Memorial Hospital.
Quilliam said the seas and winds were calm, making finding and picking up Justman much easier.
Justman, a pilot from Aiea with 35 years' experience, suffered no major injuries and was reported in good condition.
Justman is a Coast Guard civilian volunteer who flies over Hawaii waters in his own plane. He said he learned valuable information two weeks ago from a Coast Guard training course on emergency procedures.
"A lot of people would panic, but you do need to relax to do the correct thing," he said.
The crash was the second by a home-built plane in Hawaii waters in the past two months.
Retiring Coast Guard pilot Lt. Cmdr. William Swears, 43, also survived after his home-built Cozy III crashed Nov. 16 about 94 miles northeast of Maui. Swears was heading for San Francisco and survived after 3 1/2 hours in the ocean without a life preserver.
Justman, who knows Swears, said his crash and Swears' accident do not compare. "Swears' was a ferry flight, an entirely different realm of flying," he said. "I was on a very normal flight."
Justman's aircraft, which bore tail number N49RS, was a red-and-white two-seater with a bubble canopy, Coast Guard personnel said.
Through a hospital spokesman, Justman said he had flown the kit plane, built in 2000, to Kauai just two days earlier. He was on his way over again to pick up his wife, who was visiting a critically ill relative.
He said he kept the plane's Lycoming I-360, 200-horsepower engine well maintained.
"Although in perfect condition, something broke," he said.
A National Transportation Safety Board database search showed there were 11 accidents involving the RV-8, four of which were fatal, between 1998 and 2003.
Friend and pilot Mac Lanzas said the RV-8's landing gear tends to dig into the water, causing the plane to tip over rather than skid along the water like a plane with retractable landing gear.
"He's really skillful, so he did a really good job to be alive, to survive and get out of the airplane," Lanzas said.
Once the plane inverts in the water, the hard part is getting out of the cockpit, he said.
"It's always executing the last moment when the expertise and the coolness of the pilot would come into play," he said.
Lanzas, who has flown many hours with Justman, described him as an "experienced aviator, one of the best I've seen, very safety-oriented."
Justman is also knowledgeable about planes, understands engines, is detail-oriented and maintained his two planes well, Lanzas said.
Lanzas co-piloted a plane with Justman in the Great Hawaiian Air Race in February 2002 and placed 18th in the speed race category after Swears, who came in 17th.
