‘They just disappeared’: lost planes frustrate British Columbia search crews

Columbia River valley in the East Kootenays in British Columbia. For decades, the province’s civil air search and rescue association has boasted a near-perfect record of finding missing planes and people. Photograph: SMJoness/Getty Images/iStockphoto

The single engine plane landed briefly at British Columbia’s Cranbrook airport in June 2017. Its Canadian pilot, Alex Simons, and his girlfriend, Sydney Robillard, had stopped to refuel the Piper Warrior, a rented plane popular for training, before continuing westward. After struggling to get payment approved for the fuel, the couple were warned flying conditions over a nearby mountain range were rapidly deteriorating as a storm set in.

But Simons, with less than 100 hours of flight experience, departed for the city of Kamloops. The aircraft never arrived. For two weeks rescue teams searched the rugged landscape of south-eastern British Columbia. But their search found nothing.