Pilot of missing plane bound for Vancouver identified

The Lane County Sheriff’s Office is asking anyone who had contact with Leslie on or after Tuesday to call 541-682-4141.

A very weak emergency signal was reported Thursday afternoon in the general search area. However, search crews were unable to find the source of the signal and declared it a false lead, Tanory said.

Standard equipment on these planes, Tanory said, is an electronic locator transmitter, which gives off a location after impact.

“At this point in time, we have no reliable reports of an ELT being heard so that’s an unknown factor again,” Tanory said.

Investigators don’t know if the missing plane had the device on board and whether it was operational.

After the plane was reported overdue Tuesday night, airport managers at airports along the flight path were called and asked to do a ramp search to look for the tail number of the plane in question, Tanory said.

The FAA tracked the plane to a certain point along the pilot’s flight path until the plane went off radar, which is where searchers are focusing their efforts, Tanory said. That location was not released to avoid private plane owners from converging on the area and hampering search efforts, Tanory said.

“It’s simply the last known position where the radar had him. He may have descended to an elevation to where they have no radar,” Tanory said.

On Thursday, pilots with the search mission looked for signs of burned foliage and trees with broken branches.

“As times goes on, we will expand our search until the Air Force tells us to cease operations, and that is up to them,” Tanory said. “We will search to the best of our ability to the limits of our equipment and personnel within safety standard.”

The search mission resumes Friday morning, weather allowing, Tanory said.

Willy Williamson, manager at Pearson Field, said Leslie never made contact with him, anyone else at the airport or Aero Maintenance, which holds a flight school at the airport. He met Leslie a few months ago and said Leslie was relatively new to the airport.

Overdue flights are uncommon and happen for a variety of reasons, Williamson said. Most of the time, there’s nothing wrong and the pilot might have forgotten to close his or her flight plan, he said.

“To speculate that there’s anything good or bad that happened with this flight … nobody knows,” Williamson said.

Leslie’s Piper PA-28 is one of the most common private planes in the world, designed to be safe and easy to fly, Williamson said.