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Plane flew odd path
before crash
Maui residents recall seeing
the Cessna low and level
before the impact fireball
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"When I saw it, I said, 'That's a weird flight path,'" he said. "He was flying low and level."
Minutes later, the twin-engine Cessna 310 crashed into the western slope of Haleakala at the 3,700-foot level.
The pilot died in the crash, which occurred on pasture land owned by TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey and about a quarter-mile mauka of her home at the Silver Cloud Ranch, police said. No one else was on board the plane.
Maui Medical Examiner Anthony Manoukian said yesterday that authorities believe the pilot was Oahu resident Ward M. Mareels. But Manoukian said authorities will probably have to rely upon fingerprints to confirm his identity since the man was badly burned in the crash.
Wardair Aviation Inc., the registered owner of the Cessna, listed Mareels' Kailua home as its address. The company offered flight instruction, and Mareels also offered services as a midwife.
Mareels, a Kailua resident who has a wife and 2-year-old child, has written letters to the editor of the Star-Bulletin on a number of topics. His wife could not be reached for comment.
Police Detective Wendell Loo said there was no foul play suspected in the crash.
Semple-Richards said there were house lights along the slope and even a cell phone tower beacon in the vicinity of the flight path to alert the pilot about the location.
Semple-Richards and another resident, Bentley Kalaway, said the weather was clear, and they wondered why the airplane was traveling in the direction of the mountain.
"That's what made it odd," Kalaway said.
The usual flight path for aircraft is around Haleakala because of the height and steep grade of the mountain, which reaches a little more than 10,000 feet in elevation.
Bentley said she heard the airplane, then later saw a large fireball leaping above trees about a mile mauka of her home.
"It was a huge orange hillside of flames," she said.
Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Donn Walker said the twin-engine Cessna 310 had taken off from Kahului Airport at 9:18 p.m. en route to Kailua-Kona on the Big Island.
Walker said traffic controllers noticed there was no radio contact nor radar presence at 9:24 p.m.
Assistant Fire Chief Frank Tam said the body was removed from the slope yesterday morning, but the wreckage remains at the site.
National Transportation Safety Board investigator Tealeye Cornejo was scheduled to make arrangements today with Maui police to examine the crash site.
There have been other plane crashes on Haleakala in the last 12 years.
Four people on a scenic tour with relatives aboard a Cessna Cardinal 177 died in an crash in the Nahiku area on the eastern slope of Haleakala on July 13, 2002. Nine people died on April 22, 1992, when a Scenic Air Tours Beech E18S plane crashed near Haleakala crater.