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Hawaii Plane Crash Kills 9, Officials Say Nine Killed in Plane Crash in Hawaii, Officials Say
(about 13 hours later)
HONOLULU — Nine people died on Friday night in the crash of a twin-engine plane used in a skydiving operation, Hawaii officials said. Nine people aboard a plane taking passengers on a skydiving trip were killed after the plane crashed and burned on Friday night north of Honolulu, authorities said.
There were no survivors in the crash of the King Air plane on Oahu’s North Shore, said a Hawaii Department of Transportation spokesman, Tim Sakahara. The plane, a twin-engine Beechcraft BE65, crashed under unknown circumstances while taking off from Dillingham Airfield on Oahu’s North Shore around 6:30 p.m., the Federal Aviation Administration said. The plane was destroyed by the fire, according to the agency.
“Upon arrival, we saw the plane fully engulfed in fire,” said Manuel Neves, the fire chief of Honolulu, which is about an hour’s drive from the crash site. The plane went down near the perimeter of Dillingham Airfield, a small airport. “In my 40 years as a firefighter here in Hawaii, this is the most tragic aircraft incident that we’ve had,” Manny Neves, fire chief for the Honolulu Fire Department, said at a news conference on Friday night. “We had some helicopters with the military, but this is a civilian plane that went down.”
Names of the people killed were not immediately released. Mr. Neves said the plane had been used for skydiving, and that some relatives of people aboard had been waiting at the airport for their return. Many details about the crash had yet to be determined, he said. He added: “There is nothing left of the plane.”
The authorities have identified the skydiving company but not released its name. The names of the victims were also not released. It was unclear how many of those on board were passengers.
No one at the airfield was available to comment on Saturday.
Chief Neves said that the cause of the crash was not known.
The National Transportation Safety Board was sending a team to investigate, an agency spokesman, Eric Weiss, said.