MEDIA RELEASE (updated 4/19/12 at 5:35 p.m.)

The pilot of the small plane that crash-landed in Oʻokala on Thursday (April 19), is being air-lifted to The Queen’s Medical Center on Oahu in critical condition.

At 10:45 a.m., North Hilo officers responded to the Oʻokala Dairy road, near the 30-mile marker of Route 19 (Hawaii Belt Road), where they found the pilot—a 68-year-old Hilo man—seriously injured.

He had attempted an emergency landing onto a newly planted corn field after his two-seat single-engine propeller airplane reportedly lost power due to engine failure. Fire Department rescue personnel extricated him from the plane and airlifted him to North Hawaiʻi Community Hospital before he was transferred to Queen’s.

An investigator from the Federal Aviation Administration is expected to arrive at the scene today.