WAILUKU, Hawaii — An outbound flight from Hawaii’s Lanai Island crashed about a mile from the airport, killing three people and leaving three others injured, authorities said Thursday.
The crash occurred around 11:30 p.m. PST Wednesday, Maui County spokesman Rod Antone said.
He told The Associated Press that details were still sketchy but that the plane was taking off or had just taken off when it went down.
Antone said three are dead, two are critically injured and one is less seriously hurt.
There was no further detail on the condition of the injured, and no names have been released.
Authorities said that they believe everyone aboard the aircraft has been accounted for.
Fire Services Chief Lee Mainaga said crews located the aircraft about 1 mile southwest of the airport.
Antone said he still didn’t have details of how the crash occurred. Local media reports said the plane was a small aircraft.
Alberta de Jetley, Lanai Times publisher and editor, told The Maui News that the crash was off a dirt road near the Maui Electric Co. power plant.
She said that the terrain is mostly flat grassland and fallow pineapple fields.
Billionaire Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle Corp., bought 98 percent of Lanai in 2012. He later told financial news channel CNBC he envisions Lanai becoming a “little laboratory” for experimenting with more environmentally sound ways to live.
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