posted on Mar, 7 2014 @ 11:49 AM
reply to post by butterdezillion
The Cessna 208B has a very reliable engine. What I've seen of the NTSB's investigations regarding Cessna 208B engine failures is that by Oct 20,
2013, in the 20+ years since the 1980's when the 208B came out, there had been 2 NTSB investigations showing engine failure on commercial planes -
one resulting from fuel problems and the other I can't remember what the cause was.
On Oct 21st there was a Cessna 208b plane crash off Maui where the plane safely landed on a highway. Because there were sparks reported, the NTSB was
required to treat the fuselage as a crime scene. But they left it unattended overnight and in one report the NTSB's representative said that the
plane's owners - Mokulele Air - was responsible for moving the aircraft if they decided there was going to be an investigation.
Then, of course, the Makani Kai 208B crashed off Kalaupapa on Dec 11, 2013. So within 25 miles and 50 days of each other, the NTSB DOUBLED the total
number of engine failure investigations from over 20 years of investigation.
And the NTSB immediately said that the plane was unrecoverable. It was recovered by the plane's owner - Makani Kai, under Richard Schumann. But
though it went into the water nearly intact, as far as we can tell, it came out of the water a week later a total wreck, with the engine totally
separated from the rest of the fuselage.
So again, the NTSB failed to secure the evidence as if it was a crime scene, instead allowing the plane's owner to potentially contaminate the
evidence. That's twice the NTSB did that for the Cessna 208B within 50 days and 25 miles of each other.
In both instances the pilot was loudly praised but not initially named. In the Mokulele Express crash the pilot was NEVER named.
Which is an interesting fact, given that Richard Kawasaki has been claimed to be a Makani Kai pilot for the past year (or two, depending on who the
source is) but the Makani Kai web pages listing the pilots had never listed Kawasaki as their pilot, even though the pilots' list had been updated at
least three times, in the 12 months before the Dec 11th Cessna crash according to archive.org's screenshots over that time period.