In June 2017, a single-engine plane briefly landed at British Columbia’s Cranbrook airport. The Canadian pilot, Alex Simons, and his girlfriend, Sydney Robillard, were on board and had stopped to refuel the Piper Warrior, a popular training aircraft, before continuing their journey westward. However, after struggling to process payment for the fuel, the couple was warned of deteriorating flying conditions due to an approaching storm as they prepared to depart for Kamloops. Despite having less than 100 hours of flight experience, Simons chose to proceed. Tragically, the aircraft never reached its destination.
For two agonizing weeks, rescue teams scoured the rugged terrain of southeastern British Columbia in search of the missing plane, but their efforts yielded no results. Fred Carey, the head of British Columbia’s volunteer aerial search teams, expressed the frustration, saying, “They just disappeared off the face of the Earth.” More than six years later, neither the plane nor the couple has been found, leaving a deeply grieving family without closure.
For decades, the Civil Air Search and Rescue Association in the Canadian province boasted a nearly flawless record of locating missing planes and individuals. Given the increasing access to advanced technologies, it might seem that finding missing aircraft should have become more straightforward with each passing year. However, the reality faced by aerial search teams in British Columbia, tasked with exploring one of the world’s harshest landscapes, is far different. They’ve encountered a series of perplexing disappearances that have left them emotionally shattered and grappling for answers.
While aerial search and rescue operations may captivate the public’s imagination with images of determined volunteers scanning the skies to locate missing aircraft or stranded hikers, the actual work is far more demanding and less recognized than people often realize. As Carey puts it, “We don’t need a cheering audience, and we often don’t have one. We just do it because we love to fly. It’s not easy to do. It takes the right person at the right angle at the right lighting and the right time to spot something. All of that stuff has to fall into place.”
In one instance, searchers managed to locate a plane that had vanished over a densely populated urban area months after initial search efforts had been abandoned. However, in recent years, three unresolved crashes, including the case of the rented plane carrying Simons and Robillard in eastern British Columbia, have become disconcerting blemishes on their otherwise impressive track record.
While technology has certainly made the search for downed planes more manageable, with pilots equipped with mobile phones and tablets containing powerful route-tracking software, the notion of an entire aircraft vanishing seems inconceivable. One aviation forum user summed up this sentiment, asking, “How can a plane just go missing? It’s mad surely with the technology these days they could at least pinpoint the location of a plane?”
British Columbia’s mountainous terrain presents a challenge when a plane goes missing. Over half the province lacks cellular reception, which is necessary for locating a mobile phone. Without a signal, search teams must reconstruct a likely route. However, Carey believes this is where the odds have increasingly turned against search teams.
One significant reason for their challenges, according to Carey, is that they can’t anticipate the actions of younger pilots who tend to rely heavily on GPS systems. These inexperienced pilots often have a false sense of security, believing they can always descend to a nearby highway in case of trouble. This, however, is a perilous decision, as novices are typically untrained for emergency landings in adverse weather conditions, increasing the risk of crashes.
News stories often hail pilots who manage to land small planes on highways as heroes, which only reinforces the misconception that it’s a safe practice. Carey recalls another case where a young couple disappeared due to bad weather, and search teams initially assumed the pilot would have climbed to escape the storm. Consequently, they focused their efforts on the mountains surrounding the area, to no avail.
It wasn’t until a year later that a helicopter spotted a glimmer of metal just 100 yards off the highway. The pilot had stalled the aircraft, attempting to turn around after reaching the highway, and crashed it tail-first. Sadly, the couple did not survive, but the crash site had gone unnoticed initially because airplanes rarely go down near highways.
In response to these challenges, Carey believes that search teams need to adapt their strategies and be prepared to explore areas they might have overlooked in the past. They must consider the possibility that inexperienced pilots may take unexpected actions. Ultimately, rethinking search tactics and embracing a more flexible approach becomes crucial in the quest to solve these mysterious disappearances.