DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM Karen Streich watched yesterday as husband John kissed their daughter Ashley, 12, at a news conference. Father and daughter survived Wednesday's tour glider crash in Mokuleia, but pilot Tyler Nelson died.

Surviving the crash

The Wednesday plane crash was
a blur for the father and daughter
who survived

A videotape recovered from the site of Wednesday's downed glider tour plane may provide clues to what caused the fatal crash, state transportation officials said.

COURTESY OF KITV Tyler Nelson: The 22-year-old pilot from Wisconsin had a passion for flying

It took four trips and more than two hours yesterday for helicopter crews to bring down the wreckage, piece by piece, from the Mokuleia mountainside where the Schweizer SGS 2-32 glider plane crashed.

Transportation spokesman Scott Ishikawa said among the wreckage was a videocassette recorder and videotape from the flight. The Soar Hawaii Sailplanes glider had cameras mounted on a wing, the tail and in the cockpit to produce videotapes for customers, Ishikawa said.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators plan to analyze the tape for clues to the cause of the crash at the agency's office in Washington, D.C., he said.

"Hopefully with that, they can piece together what happened," Ishikawa said. "NTSB should have a preliminary report within 30 days. ... The overall investigation will take about a year."

JAMM AQUINO / JAQUINO@STARBULLETIN.COM The wrecked fuselage of the Soar Hawaii Sailplanes glider lay on the tarmac at Dillingham Airfield yesterday after being retrieved.

The crash killed pilot Tyler Nelson, 22, but left the two passengers -- John Streich and his 12-year-old daughter Ashley of Gig Harbor, Wash. -- with just scrapes, bruises and sore muscles.

Streich, 52, recalled that Nelson fought hard to regain control of the plane not once, but twice, before they crashed.

"Everything was working fine until we got over this ridge," he said. "We started to circle a little bit and all of a sudden the plane dropped and he was losing control.

"He got it back ... and then we seemed to have dropped again, and at that point we knew something was wrong."

Streich said he remembers heading toward the trees and rocks and brush and the pilot saying, "We're going down."

"It was strange. I was calm. Ashley was calm. We didn't say a word. We watched us go into the bank and the trees and so forth, and that's all I remember."

Ashley said everything was a blur.

"It just happened too fast," she said. "I just remember hitting the ground and then opening my eyes and one hand was out the window and the other was trapped behind my dad."

The glider plane tour had actually been an early birthday present for Ashley, who turns 13 years old on April 19. And for 15 minutes everything was fine, with Nelson showing the two tourists Oahu's scenic waterfalls and North Shore beaches from above.

But within seconds, the group went from being in the air to crash-landing upside down on a mountainside.

After the crash, Streich said, he could hear the pilot suffering but could not get free to help him.

"The pilot was in front of us," he said. "We could hear him breathing, very labored, gargled. He was alive for a while.

"If I could have moved and got out of the plane, we would have did something."

JAMM AQUINO / JAQUINO@STARBULLETIN.COM Salvage staffers from Pacific Helicopter Tours of Maui hauled a bag containing the video camera, VCR and tape recovered yesterday from the tour glider wreckage that killed 22-year-old pilot Tyler Nelson and injured two passengers Wednesday at Mokuleia. The copter crew took four trips into the valley, with the biggest recovery being the glider's fuselage at right.

The scenic tour took off from Dillingham Airfield. Although there is some confusion about when the plane took off Wednesday, Honolulu fire officials said by the time the wreckage was reported missing at 1:15 p.m., it had already been about 30 minutes overdue.

It was not until about 3:45 p.m. that fire rescue crews could get to the plane, tie it up so that it did not slide down the hill during their rescue efforts, and pull out the survivors.

The Streiches said they spent an anxious couple of hours, stuck upside down in the wreckage and waiting for help.

"They will come, they will get us, just hang in there, we're doing OK," said John Streich, about what he told his daughter to calm her.

Mother Karen Streich was back at their Waikiki timeshare when she heard the news about the crash. But it was not until after she heard her family's story that she realized how blessed they were.

"When I heard they were walking out, I was like, 'What?'" she said. "I still can't believe they just walked out, but I'm very glad they did."