The airport is outside of town and apparently the employees had closed shop early. Fuddy's plane was scheduled to depart at 3:35 but departed early around 3:15. Everyone agrees the engine failed in the first seconds from take off so they were well within sight of the airport. Another plane in the area had radioed the Molokai tower to request landing and Molokai had already heard the emergency beacon and asked if they would could see the downed plane. They saw it almost immediately and landed at the Kalaupapi airport around 4:00 to find no one there.
Why was the Kalaupapa Airport closed early? When did the last employee leave the property? Why did they leave before Honorary Mayor Fuddy's plane depart? Yes, she was the honorary mayor. All those passengers didn't walk to the airport, they had to be driven there by taxi, friends or family. The airport has been in a three year controversy as to where to build a fire truck garage because they don't want it to block the view of people seeing planes off. Not that the land is smooth and you can see forever around it. Are we to believe that all the airport employees when home early knowing full well that the "Mayor" was expected and that Fuddy's and the other passengers' rides hadn't bothered to see them off as is "custom"? The airport's home page states it's custom for people to come out and watch the planes.
“Another plane in the area had radioed the Molokai tower to request landing and Molokai had already heard the emergency beacon and asked if they would could see the downed plane. They saw it almost immediately and landed at the Kalaupapi airport around 4:00 to find no one there.”
On the inside of the door on the left side there’s usually a switch to throw that turns the emergency beacon on. Sounds like the pilot did that. The beacon was also probably picked up by Honolulu and satellites orbiting the Earth.
The pilot most likely also threw his radio over to 121.5 MHz and called out a mayday alert which Molokai and Honolulu would have certainly heard.
I would think that if Molokai tower acknowledged the emergency they would have stayed to assist the Coast Guard until the situation was over.
Very, very strange.