Xavier graduate dies in helicopter crash in Hawaii

CEDAR RAPIDS - A 1999 Xavier High School graduate was among five people killed Thursday in a helicopter crash on Hawaii's Molokai island.

Nathan Cline, 30, was piloting the Blue Hawaiian Helicopters flight that went down about a quarter-mile from an elementary school. The school's principal said it was cloudy at the time of the crash, and it had just been raining hard.

Also killed in the crash were Nicole and Michael Abel from the Pittsburgh area and an unidentified couple from Ontario, Canada, authorities said.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Allen Kenitzer said a National Transportation Board Safety investigator arrived in Hawaii on Friday to begin probing the cause of the crash. A preliminary report typically would come within a week or two, but it could be months before the probable cause of the crash is determined.

Blue Hawaiian Helicopters owner David Chevalier said the helicopter that crashed was less than a year old and was being leased from Nevada Helicopter Leasing LLC.

Condolences for Cline poured in on Blue Hawaiian's Facebook page Friday.

“Nathan had a wonderfully quirky sense of humor, gave a memorable tour of the islands, and was an all-around great guy,” wrote Rafael Perrino, who flew with Cline on the West Maui-Molokai tour in August. “My heart goes out to Nathan's family, the families of lost passengers, and the Blue Hawaiian Helicopters team.”

Kristin Zukis Gray said she was on the same tour two months ago and called Cline “a great, sweet, nice kid.”

“May he rest in peace. And take solace in the fact that he died doing something that he truly loved - you could tell the second you stepped on board and put on your headphones how much he enjoyed what he did,” she wrote.

Blue Hawaiian conducts 160,000 tours each year on all of the Hawaiian islands.

Tour companies advertise trips to Molokai to see the island's sea cliffs and Hawaii's tallest waterfall. The remote Kalaupapa peninsula on Molokai is where Hawaii exiled leprosy patients between 1866 and 1969.

The mostly rural island of about 7,000 people is between Maui and Oahu, where world leaders have gathered this week for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Honolulu.