Posted on 10/05/2007 12:49:31 PM PDT by george76
A search is under way in southern Colorado's San Juan Mountains for a missing medical plane that crashed near Alamosa with three people aboard.
Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Mike Fergus says flight controllers last had radio and radar contact with the twin-engine Beech King Air C-90A at about 11:20 p.m. Thursday.
Glendale-based HealthONE spokeswoman Leslie Horna says the Eagle Air Medical plane was based out of Chinle, Arizona.
Horna says a search and rescue effort is under way, but weather at the suspected crash site is unfavorable.
Those aboard the plane were the pilot, a flight nurse and a paramedic.
.
Maybe they’ve landed next to Fossett.
A search is under way in southern Colorado for a medical plane from Phoenix that crashed with three people aboard.
Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Mike Fergus said flight controllers last had radio and radar contact with the twin-engine Beechcraft King Air around 11:20 p.m. MST Thursday.
Its last known location was about 20 miles southwest of Alamosa.
The Beechcraft King Air C-90 twin engine, turbo-prop plane, was carrying a flight nurse, a flight paramedic and the pilot, Dustin Duncan, a spokesman for the Association of Air Medical Services, told the Denver Post.
The plane was en route to Alamosa to pick up a patient for transport to Colorado Springs for treatment at Memorial hospital, Leslie Horna, spokeswoman for HealthOne, told the Post.
Ground crews have been dispatched to southern Colorado’s rugged San Juan Mountains, but the Civil Air Patrol said high winds and fog were preventing a search from the air.
Duncan told the Post it was raining and clouds were at a low elevation when the plane went down.
The Eagle Air Medical aircraft from Chinle, Ariz., is owned by a Blanding, Utah company,
http://news.ktar.com/?nid=6&sid=612395
There were no patients onboard.
The plane’s last known location was 20 miles west southwest of Alamosa, Colorado.
Civil air patrol began reviewing radar tracks Friday morning to trace the plane’s trail.
http://www.abc15.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=d4da7625-b55f-4dce-90cb-a1db5dd08160
“...The search is concentrated in the Charlies Peak area of Archuleta County and an adjacent area in Conejos County around Green Lake.
Search crews from Rio Grande County are also participating in the search, according to Gurule. The craft was first thought to be lost in Rio Grande County.”
http://www.alamosanews.com/fe_view_article.php?story_id=3838&page_id=72&heading=0
The twin-engine Beech King Air C-90A disappeared from radar at about 11:23 p.m. Thursday at an altitude of 11,700 feet. That was the last radar contact the FAA had with the plane.
There has been no radio contact from the plane since then.
“The fact that they lost radar and radio signal at the same time indicates that something bad happened,” said Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor in Seattle.
The ELT beacon could be sent off by a crash or hard landing.
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/14278130/detail.html
You need to be darned sure where you're at when you're that low in that neighborhood.
Apparently the pilot wasn't darned sure where he was at.
Rugged country. Beautiful, but rugged. But it’s not like it’s the Alaskan outback.
There is lots of land over 12,000 in this area.
Yep. There are at least two "13"s in the San Juans -- Uncompahgre and Sneffels -- and several 12s. And I'm told the turbulence is wicked when flying the passes thereabouts.
Civil Air Patrol is sending two crews on foot as the dense fog in the area is preventing them from doing a search and rescue by air.
http://www.9news.com/news/top-article.aspx?storyid=78554
The peaks to the southwest of Alamosa are 12,244 feet
At that height could they have slammed into a mountain top in dense fog (clouds)?
A quarter of mile to the west of green lake the peak is 12,250'
yes.
Searchers have spotted the wreckage of a missing medical plane with three crew members on a mountainside in the rugged San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado, the Civil Air Patrol said today.
“We don’t know about survivors yet,” said Mark Young of Montrose. “It’s in eastern Archuleta County near Green Lake on a mountain side north of Charles Peak.”
Young said a helicopter will land near the crash site to check on the three-member crew ...
The plane was flying by visual flight rules and had not filed a flight plan.
The Web site for Eagle Air Med is dark, with white letters saying it is on “stand-down status.”
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5715503,00.html
Bennett Peak, Summit Peak and Conejos Peak are all over 13,000 and there are at least a dozen 12,300 and above around them to the SW of Alamosa.
If flying from Colorado Springs to Alamosa and he got several miles SW of Alamosa he may have gotten lost or dodging weather.
That is closer to 45 miles SW of Alamosaon google earth at the Archuleta county line with Conejos county
Green Lake is at 11,300 and it east of the Banded Peak Ranch and SW of Conejos Peak in the South San Juan Wilderness.
I elk hunt in that area it is pretty rugged.
Very stormy in Colorado last night.
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