The Shadow
BRIDGEPORT, W.Va. (AP) – Civil Air Patrol teams were searching a mountainous and densely wooded area in southeastern West Virginia on Tuesday for a small plane reported missing during a flight from Texas to Virginia.
Two planes were in the air, and a ground team was headed for the Rainelle area of Greenbrier County on the state’s southeastern border, said Maj. Jeffery Schrock, a spokesman for the air patrol.
Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Lynn Lunsford said Kwan Kwok of Virginia was reported missing by his sister, who said Kwok had recently bought the aircraft in Dalhart, Texas, to fly back to his home state.
Schrock said the search began Sunday after the Civil Air Patrol received an alert from the Air Force that the plane was missing. It had left Texas Nov. 23, but Lunsford said Kwok didn’t file a flight plan.
The search area was recommended by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida, but Schrock said he was not certain how the Air Force had narrowed it down.
Nor could he immediately estimate the size of the search zone.
The area is “very desolate,” densely forested and physically challenging, Schrock said. “I think it’s going to be hard to get in with vehicles. You might have to walk several miles once we find the aircraft.”
The pilots who began searching Tuesday are trained in mountain flying, aware of how to avoid hazards such as power lines and cell phone towers while watching for unusual objects in the rugged terrain, he said.
The Pennsylvania Civil Air Patrol, meanwhile, was sending a plane with a system that allows searchers to program a particular spectral signature – a kind of metal, for example – into an onboard computer. A camera then tries to detect and pinpoint anything on the ground that matches that signature.
The sensor can also detect objects that are significantly different from the background in which they are located.
Although Greenbrier County borders southwestern Virginia, Shrock said he is not yet in contact with Virginia authorities. Nor has the search expanded beyond Rainelle.
“That could change as we get more information,” he said.
