By Debbie Williams Reporter
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Published: Thu, July 31, 2008 - 2:48 pm
Last Updated: Thu, July 31, 2008 - 4:33 pm
Debbie Williams
The civil air patrol says a plane that reported it was in distress "possibly" went down somewhere between Mobile and Pensacola. Search efforts have focused on Baldwin County..
The radio frequency used to monitor emergency location transponders or ELT, is silent.
"A lot of time you'll have an aircraft that will make a hard landing, take an impact somehow and the ELT works off an impact switch and it'll set them off sometime and it'll send out a false alarm," says airplane mechanic Charles Larson.
More than 24 hours after a "mayday" call and an emergency beacon was heard, Civil Air Patrol Captain Jonathan Lartigue says the search is on. "We are treating this as if there is an aircraft in distress until we receive indication otherwise."
Airports in Baldwin County are not reporting any missing or overdue planes, but that doesn't mean one hasn't gone down according to Larson. "A lot of people just go joy riding and they are flying in that local area and they don't have to file a flight plan. If one of them had a problem there would be no way to track them at all."
The civil air patrol has narrowed the search area to a general corridor from Mobile, thorugh Foley to Pensacola, FL and while no crews were searching from the air or ground Thursday, they did stay busy. "Trying to gather more leads, analyze radar tracks, tracking down aircraft owners in Alabama to determine if their aircraft are okay and basically trying any means at our disposal to identify the source of the distress signal."
So far, no news is good news.
The Civil Air Patrol is asking anyone who saw a plane in distress or anythign suspicious to contact their local sheriff's office.
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You know the wife says she heard a low flying plane wednesday during the afternoon gully wash over the swamps behind Saraland. Could be nothing to it but it might be worth a look see.