SULTAN – Searchers in the air and on the ground combed a 12-mile radius on the north flank of Haystack Mountain on Tuesday after several commercial pilots reported receiving an aircraft distress call.
No plane was found.
At least four pilots flying out of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport intercepted the mayday call sometime after 1 p.m., said Thomas Peterson, the state Department of Transportation’s aviation emergency services coordinator.
Ground search crews were pulled out of the rugged terrain at dusk Tuesday. It was not known whether they would return this morning.
Officials picked up a signal from an emergency locator beacon, and satellites pinpointed the source as the Sultan area.
However, another airplane at the nearby Monroe airport inadvertently had its emergency signal activated, Peterson said.
When the Monroe plane’s signal was turned off, officials lost the signal near Sultan. He said the Sultan signal could have been created by the Monroe plane’s transmission after it bounced off mountains in the area.
Peterson said the search, which involved numerous aircraft and a total of about 80 people, could have been a result of a coincidence – the unverified mayday call and the signal from the Monroe plane.
The search, which included about 50 volunteers on the ground, focused on an area about 41/2 miles southeast of Sultan.
Helicopters and airplanes scoured the area, hampered only by cloud cover near the top of the ridgelike mountain, which rises about 3,000 feet from the Skykomish River Valley floor.
“The weather is warm, although there is a cloud cover,” Peterson said. “For this time this year, it’s fairly good searching conditions, at least until dark. The only thing we don’t have is snow and rain right now, so this is good weather, other than the fact we can’t see the top.”
Crews probably won’t return to search today unless new clues surface.
As of last night, nobody had reported an overdue plane, Peterson said.
“We’re kind of running out of things to follow up on,” Peterson said. “It was a good response, and if there was someone out there, we would have found them.”
Department of Transportation Aeronautics Division officials asked Snohomish County Search and Rescue for help in locating the plane, said sheriff’s Sgt. Danny Wickstrom, the county’s search and rescue coordinator.
The sheriff’s search helicopter is not operating right now, so officials asked for help from the King County Sheriff’s Office helicopter crew, Wickstrom said.
His crews began the volunteer ground search, which swelled to about 50 people by late afternoon. The King County search-and-rescue helicopter, two Civil Air Patrol planes and two Washington Air Search and Rescue planes also searched from the air.
It’s a relatively small area for six aircraft to be searching, Peterson said. The search area is rugged and steep, marked by deep gullies and heavy timber that made searching difficult.
Authorities had only a partial tail number from the aircraft that called in for help, and there was no information on what type or size of airplane emitted the signal, how many people were aboard, where the plane originated or where it was heading.
Reporter Jim Haley: 425-339-3447 or haley@heraldnet.com.
Elizabeth Armstrong / The Herald
Tom Peterson of the state Department of Transportation’s Aviation Division watches a helicopter search for a possible downed plane southeast of Sultan on Tuesday.
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