Did you see my #56 above with the flight times? Flight time for the Coast Guard should have been less than half an hour. No way did this happen as it is being reported and re-reported. No amount of scrubbing and revision will “fix” their timeline because too much was seen and said by too many. Well, I take that back. Tell a big enough lie enough times and it will become the truth. This is another Benghazi then vs. Benghazi now.
The actual NTSB report says the passengers were rescued within 80 minutes.
http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/GenPDF.aspx?id=WPR14FA068&rpt=p
On December 11, 2013, at 1522 Hawaiian standard time, a Cessna 208B, N687MA, sustained substantial damage following a loss of engine power and ditching into the Pacific near Kalaupapa, Hawaii.
The airline transport pilot and two passengers were seriously injured, one passenger was fatally injured, and five passengers received minor injuries. Makani Kai Air was operating the flight under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 135. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed
for the cross-country flight, which had originated about 2 minutes before the accident. A company flight plan had been filed. The flight departed from the Kalaupapa airport on the island of Molokai, and was en route to Honolulu International airport, on the island of Oahu.
The pilot stated that shortly after takeoff, a loud bang was heard and there was a total loss of power. After a short glide, he performed an open ocean ditching. The airplane floated for approximately 25 minutes and then sank. All the passengers put on their life preservers and exited the airplane. US Coast Guard and Maui Fire and Rescue personnel recovered the passengers approximately 80 minutes later.
Updated on Dec 30 2013 3:32PM
The thing that is baffling is what I just found today - Josh Lang’s claims about how he found the aircraft, at http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/24246422/exclusive-pilot-describes-discovering-molokai-plane-crash
According to that, the Emergency Locator Transmitter was beeping before 3:30pm. Lang found the plane within minutes, called for help, went back to the Molokai Airport looking for help but there was nobody there, went back to the scene of the landing, and waited there until an hour after the initial sighting, before anybody showed up - and that was a military helicopter just to mark where the plane had gone down, about 500 yards from shore. So it was over an hour from the time that the emergency system was alerted to a plane down in the water, to the time that anybody showed up, just to put flares down for the rescue team that would come later.
And the Coast Guard rescue team said (as reported at http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/12/21872811-health-director-who-approved-obama-birth-certificate-dies-in-plane-crash )that “usually they would drop rescue gear into the water for the survivors but because the helicopters had arrived quickly so that was not required.”
“We acted as the on scene commander,” Ferguson, an avionics electrical technician, third class, said. “So we control all the different assets flying around there and made sure no one flew into that air space.”
So even though Lang called for help immediately upon finding the downed plane, the Coast Guard was not alerted until after Lang had already flown to Molokai Airport, looked around and found nobody, and flown back to the site.
It all just seems crazy.
Too bad he didn’t land the plane in the Hudson River like Sullenberger did, in full view of everybody and with local security cameras recording everything.