It sounds like the emergency personnel were intentionally delayed.
According to their press release they got the call at 3:27pm. According to the Honolulu EMS, the 2 victims were picked up from the Honolulu airport at 6:30. That’s 3 hours for the Coast Guard to pick up 3 people - 2 of which were injured - and get them to an airport to be picked up by EMS.
I’ve read a good portion of the USCG’s protocol manual, which I linked here earlier, so I’ve seen some of the logistics issues, which can be quite complicated. But this was a good-weather day, the crash was close to shore so any dangerous drifting would be away from shore making the search easy, and the crash had already been sighted by another pilot in the area. There was nothing complicated about this mission.
Why did it take them 3 hours to deal with 3 people a 15-minute flight away from them?