The flight was short-lived. When the Transair Boeing 737 took off from Honolulu International Airport on Oahu at around 1:33 a.m. on July 2, the pilots noticed an engine failure in the middle of the climb at a height of only 640 meters, which they reported to the tower.
Actually, the destination of their short flight was Kahului Airport on the Hawaiian island of Maui. But at 1.46 a.m., the second engine of the 45-year-old Boeing 737-200 also cut out. “We want to go to the next runway, please”, was the radio message from the two crew members in the cockpit.
They lost more and more height, reaching the departure airport or the even closer Kalaeloa Airport was out of the question. The pilots had to launch a ditch in the dark night. The plane hit Mamala Bay off Honolulu just three kilometers from the coast.
The crew can be saved
On impact, the aircraft broke into several parts. The crew got outside through the cockpit window – into the water. One of the pilots clung to the stern, which was still floating. In an immediately initiated rescue operation, one pilot was rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter and the other by the Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting boat. Both were flown to a hospital, some with serious injuries, and survived.
A week later, underwater cameras saw the large wreckage at a depth of up to 140 meters. The salvage operation started in October in order to get not only the fuselage parts and containers, but above all the engines for the accident investigation from the Pacific Ocean.
With the emergence of the rear section, the salvage work has now been completed. On November 2, the National Transportation Safety Board announced that the two flight recorders, the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, had also been recovered.
The subsequent investigations into the cause of the accident will take one to two years to complete.
Those: www.ntsb.gov
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