‘I thought it was game over’

As he looked out the window of the Cessna 172 he had been piloting moments before, it occurred to 21-year-old Michael Dowsett that he was about to die.

“I genuinely did think that was it,” he said Thursday as he sat in a wheelchair at Hilo Medical Center, flanked on the left by his parents, Susan and Jay Dowsett, with HMC Trauma Program Coordinator Louise Fincher sitting on his right.

“For sure, we’ll just be a big fireball, I thought. I thought it was game over.”

Dowsett was scheduled to begin testing for his pilot’s license today, and was getting in some last-minute flight time at Hilo International Airport on Tuesday afternoon, along with his pilot instructor and another student, when the single-engine plane they were flying in lost engine power and plummeted to the ground.

Dowsett received multiple lacerations, broke both of his legs, and fractured his cheekbone, among other injuries. The instructor and the other student on board were transported to Queen’s Medical Center in critical condition. There was no additional information available Thursday as to their identities or their medical conditions.

Dowsett explained that he had flown to Akaka Falls earlier in the day and then returned to the airport to perform a number of training maneuvers — including touch-and-goes, which involve landing and taking off again in rapid succession.

As he approached the end of Runway 3 at the north end of the airport near the homes in Keaukaha, Dowsett said he pulled back on the stick and took the plane into the air again.

“We had about 85 (knots) on the speed,” he said, “and the engine, it seemed like it started losing power. The instructor caught on immediately, and I’m sure he assumed my hand just slipped back a little bit, so he forced my hand forward, pushing the throttle forward, which is what you’re supposed to do.”

The throttle, however, was already pushed as far as it would go. With both knowing they had a problem, Dowsett said he quickly relinquished control of the plane to his instructor.

“We were already at the end of the runway, and we were maybe 50 to 100 feet off the ground, and had no power. Normally, if we had runway left, we would have simply just nosed over, and we would have just got some airspeed up and flared and did a regular landing. No problem. We actually practiced that a lot, because that’s the worst-case scenario. The problem was … that there was no more runway in front of us anymore. It was just the houses.”

Instead, the instructor banked the plane “hard and fast” to the right at about a 45-degree angle in an attempt to land on the strip of grass at the end of the runway.

“It was just, it was just so fast,” Dowsett said, his mother and father both attempting to contain their emotions as he spoke. “… We needed to get back, like, now. I remember once we had it (the plane) over, I was looking and I could actually start seeing the blades of grass, and he didn’t even have time to key the mic and tell the tower what was going on. Normally, we would have declared an emergency, but we didn’t even have enough altitude to do that.

“The instructor just said, ‘We’ve got a problem,’ and then we hit. It was just so quick.”

Dowsett said he remained conscious through the entire ordeal and was able to crawl from the plane despite his injuries.

The young man, his parents and hospital representatives were unwilling to speak about the other victims in the crash for fear of revealing private information, but Dowsett’s mother praised first responders for their efforts to help all three crash victims.

The family said they had not yet been in contact with the families of the other victims, and they wanted to take the opportunity to send their best wishes.

“We certainly wish the flight instructor — he’s an excellent instructor and a good friend to our son — and the other student pilot well in their recoveries, because we understand they were very seriously injured, and it’s got to be difficult for them and their families,” said Susan Dowsett.

Fincher said she anticipated her patient, who is a kinesiology student at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, would recover quickly because his young age.

“He is very positive about this experience and very positive about his recovery. He’s a good soul. … His injuries were all addressed very quickly. He did go into the operating room. Obviously, we always triage our patients based on the most severe … and from the beginning we were more concerned about the other two victims from the crash,” she said. “His wounds have all been taken care of. Most of his orthopedic injuries have been already set. He’s been up, he’s been walking. He’s on the road to recovery, but it is going to be a long haul.”

Fincher estimated, however, that Dowsett could leave the hospital in a week or so.

As for a return to the skies, Dowsett said the crash wouldn’t be likely to deter him, since he thinks the odds now are solidly in his favor.

“I tell (people afraid of flying) to find someone that has been in a plane crash and then get on a plane with them, because the chances of that happening to that person again? Slim to none.”

An investigation headed by the National Transportation Safety Board with input by the Federal Aviation Administration continued Thursday into the crash. The federal agencies report that it could take months to arrive at an official cause of the crash.

Email Colin M. Stewart at cstewart@hawaiitribune-herald.com.