MATINICUS ISLAND, Maine — As the small plane rose into the clear blue sky above Matinicus Island on Saturday afternoon, passenger Eva Murray clenched her husband’s hand in the back seat.
“You okay?” Paul Murray asked her.
“You okay?” Paul Murray asked her.
It was the first time they had flown with Penobscot Island Air since pilot Don Campbell crashed and died Wednesday evening in the woods near the island’s gravel runway. The Murrays were heading to the mainland for his funeral, but it wasn’t the easiest trip. Although the Cessna’s engine roared confidently as it climbed higher, Eva, 47, still held tightly to her husband.
Just three months ago, she had been on a flight to the mainland with the same flying service when something went wrong shortly after takeoff, leading to what she later would call “one bad minute.”
The engine didn’t sound right, the plane couldn’t gain enough altitude, and pilot Robert Hoffman’s demeanor changed as he worked intensely to safely land the single-engine Cessna 206 and its three passengers.
“He never panicked or took his hands off things, even for a second,” she said.
Eva, a freelance writer, baker and emergency medical technician, recalled earlier Saturday how she moved the microphone of the headset that the passengers and pilot normally wear in order to communicate aboard the noisy plane.
“So if I screamed, or said anything, I wouldn’t disturb the pilot,” she said. “I had an instant where I wondered if it was real.”
Then the plane “ditched,” or made an emergency landing into the Atlantic Ocean about 150 meters off the island, the force of which may have caused her to black out for a few moments.
“I have no recollection of going down,” Eva said. “We went from hitting the water to me being in the water.”
When she came to, she was underwater in the downed plane. She couldn’t see anything, and had to grope her way to the pilot’s side to escape the plane. It was cold and frightening and she was bleeding profusely from deep gashes on her face, but Eva doesn’t remember those things.
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