The small plane that went missing off of Maui's north coast Saturday night belonged to Jose Krall, the pastry chef and owner of Maui Bake Shop & Deli in Wailuku, his wife, Claire Fujii-Krall said Sunday.
The U.S. Coast Guard was still searching for the aircraft -- a four-seater Cessna 172 -- Sunday afternoon. A Coast Guard spokesman in Honolulu said the pilot's identity would not be released until family members had been notified.
"There's no body, and they found a little debris, but that was his plane," Fujii-Krall told The Maui News. "He was talking to the air tower when he went off the radar and they lost sight of him."
Article Photos
The Maui News / CARLA TRACY photo
Jose Krall is pictured in the kitchen of Maui Bake Shop & Deli in 2010.
The plane had departed from Kahului Airport en route to Molokai on Saturday night and was approximately 2 1/2 miles north of Kahului at 7 p.m., according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Fujii-Krall said that her husband was trying to turn around and return to Maui because of hazy conditions.
"The conditions were really bad. The haze was too dense," she said. "He wanted to turn around."
She said friends were helping to clear out perishable food items from the bake shop Sunday afternoon and she felt uncertain about the bakery's future.
"He was the bread winner. It can't run without him," Fujii-Krall said, adding that Dec. 10 would have marked 23 years in business.
Krall was born in Nimes, France, south of Paris. He was trained as both a baker and a pastry chef and has worked from Switzerland to Belgium, according to a 2010 Maui News profile of the popular bakery. He arrived in the U.S. at age 19 and has been in the kitchens of some of the top names in pastry.
