“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.
Blah, my 4:00 should have been 3:30 when the airport employees should hanging the closed sign on the door but not have left the premises.