Search for missing plane in southern BC Interior enters day five

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KAMLOOPS (NEWS 1130) – Search and rescue teams have detected an emergency beacon as they hunt for a small plane and a young couple in the southern BC Interior.

But despite an extensive aerial search which has been ongoing since Thursday, there is still no sign of any wreckage.

“Because the signal is weak and intermittent, we can’t track it and locate it,” says Major Stefan Szkwarek at search headquarters in Kelowna.

He adds trying to find the plane in such a wide swath of wilderness is like finding a needle in a haystack.

“Making matters worse, the terrain is extremely rugged, lots of snow-capped mountains. Weather has not been cooperating.”

The pilot, 21-year-old Alex Simons, and the passenger, 21-year-old Sydney Robillard, were last seen in Cranbrook on Thursday while refuelling before continuing their flight to Kamloops. They initially took off from Lethbridge.

Lieutenant Colonel Bryn Elliot says there is a chance Simons may have been able to bring the plane down safely.

“It’s an interesting thing where they will get so slow that they’ll actually stall, but they’ll stall at just the right point. It will facilitate a type of landing,” he says.

Three military planes and three helicopters are joined by ten volunteer aircraft covering 150 miles of air space.

“The area is vast, the aircraft had a lot of fuel. So they could have gone a long, long way and found a little area to land in,” Lt. Col. Elliott adds.

There have been sightings reported by members of the public, which are being investigated, and teams are trying to track the pair’s cell phone signals.

Anyone who may have seen the aircraft or has relevant information is asked to call the search and rescue tip line at 250.331.1967.

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