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Missing plane found near Mammoth |
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Wednesday, 06 May 2009 |
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By Mike Gervais
Register Staff
5-5-2009 A search team with the U.S. Air Force discovered a downed aircraft near Mammoth Airport Friday morning that was identified as the motor glider that went missing Friday, April 24.
The pilot and passenger, Allan Raymond Melendy, 67, and Mary Elizabeth Hayden, 63, both of Canon City, Colo., who were reported missing Friday evening when they did not arrive in Modesto as planned, were confirmed dead at the scene.
“Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families at this difficult time,” said Incident Commander Tolga Tarhan.
A U.S. Air Force Pavehawk rescue helicopter team from Nellis Air Force Base spotted the wreckage approximately 12 miles northeast of Mammoth Lakes at about 11 a.m. on Friday.
“They found it Friday morning, then they had to maneuver in and lower someone down to the scene to verify the tail number,” said Civil Air Patrol Lt. Matthew Scherzi.
By Saturday afternoon the Mono County coroner arrived at the scene to identify the victims in the crash and remove the bodies. The National Transportation Safety Board is scheduled to remove the debris and wreckage sometime this week. The remains of the aircraft will be reconstructed in an attempt to discern why the plane went down. Results from that investigation will not be available for several months.
Melendy and Hayden were reported overdue Friday, April 24 when their motor glider failed to arrive as scheduled in Modesto. The couple flew out of Tonopah, Nev. earlier that day.
The Civil Air Patrol was activated by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center and launched a full-scale search Saturday, April 25.
Over the next week more than 200 Civil Air Patrol members from California and Nevada flew more than 150 missions “over some of the most dangerous terrain in the United States,” Scherzi said.
Crews were joined by helicopters from the California National Guard and Moffett Federal Airfield and personnel from the 58th and 66th Rescue Squadrons at Nellis Air Force Base to help with high-altitude searches.
“They were checking high-altitude locations that are difficult for our fixed-wing planes to get into,” Scherzi said.
“Flight crews braved high winds, treacherous terrain and altitudes as high as 17,500 feet during the last week,” Scherzi said. “High altitude flight requiring the use of oxygen provided additional operational and logistical challenges.”
Scherzi added that, once the aircraft was identified, the Air Force flight crews could not fly a photographer to the crash site to document the scene because of weight restrictions on the helicopters and other limitations caused by the high altitude.
The helicopter was able to get close enough to allow a member of the Air Force search team to rappel down to the crash site to check for survivors and an identification number on the tail of the plane, to confirm that they had indeed found the missing glider, not an older crash.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 10 July 2009 )
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