It was another fruitless day for those searching for the missing Dynamic Aviation-owned Beech King Air aircraft and its three occupants even after a weak Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) signal was detected on Saturday.
Missing: James Wesley Barker
Head of the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA), Zulfikar Mohammed, yesterday confirmed that the ELT signal was picked up but he said it now means that the search and rescue party will have to narrow it down to a specific location.
Mohammed said that because the area is so big the receiving of the weak signal really means nothing unless there is a specific location. He said the more precisely they can “pinpoint the location the better result they would get.” He suggested that it has to be narrowed down to about 100 square miles before it can really mean something.
The Head of the GCAA said that the ground search continued aided by the Dynamic Aviation plane and the helicopter which was manned by the Special Forces. “A lot happened but it is just that there was no success. They would have to continue searching tomorrow (today),” he said. The plane went missing two Saturdays ago
Its occupants were conducting a geophysics survey. Those on board were the pilot Captain James Wesley Barker, First Officer Chris Paris, who are both US citizens, and Canadian Patrick Murphy, a Geophysics technician.
Arnold, the fact is that the commercial jetliner disentegrated at above 20000 feet, the rest was free fall. At the time of the accident, the tower had apparently lost radar contact with both planes. reason for the accident, most likely.
The Adventurer/record holder in hot air ballons and aircrafts, Steve Fosset went missing, in California, after more than 6 months OF SEARCHING, with the
Most Advanced State of the Art Technology Could not be Found or Located.
One year later and by sheer Luck, a cattle farmer found his wallet with his pilots license, and didn’t even know who it was, reported,,,,,, later the wreckagewas found….
With the little that Guyana has and the help of the British and the Dynamic aviation and Guyanas’ Bush Veteran Pilots are trying their best, Desperation pushes any one to criticise.
I have toagree that at this point the search and rescue operation does not seem to have been handled as well as it could have been. I understand that it is not an easy area to search but it seems to be taking a longer time then it should. The families of the missing men are keeping up hope but it gets harder as each day goes by. As a family friend of Patricks I can only say our thoughts and prayers are with him and the two crew members and their friends and family and that this will come to a happy ending soon.
That weak signal should have been used to preform an Aural Null ELT Homing search. It’s very frustrating sitting on the sidelines and watching this search going from bad to worse.
Hi all again. If you haven’t yet, please read my previous post here: http://www.stabroeknews.com/news/search-for-missing-aircraft-still-futile/
I would like to acknowledge that frustration levels are running high especially, since it has been so long since they went missing. I would also like to echo the comment of several of the above posts with regards to jungle searching being tough. ["No use involving the foreigners who are involved in the search, they do not know the country."] 8R-DAW we also can’t make assumptions about the experience of the foreigners. How do we know they’ve never searched for and operated in the jungle, it’s a pretty audacious statement to make without knowing the searchers. Again I would ask: Have we been in the jungle with them? Do we know first hand the challenges they are facing? Have we ever tried to track an ELT before? How can we assume the searchers have been doing a poor job unless we have been there first hand to see what is actually going on and participating? With all due respect to those who are frustrated about not knowing what’s going on, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, particularly since we don’t know anything about situation on the ground.
Without “a-d-e-q-u-a-t-e f-o-r-w-a-r-d p-l-a-n-n-i-n-g a-n-d t-h-i-n-k-i-n-g” by the authorities at the highest levels in Guyana (including the Guyana Defense Force (GDF) this incident (combined assumed plane crash and subsequent search and rescue/search and recovery activities) was a failure/disappointment waiting to happen.
mike and bill you both seem to have the answers, and criticism. why dont you guys take a couple of weeks off and go to guyana and volunteer. your expertise will be very much appreciated by all.
How about a (the) movie? Save all the “videos” when you make the trip into Guyana’s beautiful (and sometimes treacherous) jungle guys. Good luck.
well said stone 80 . there is only so much butter for so much bread. resources are tight. in guyana how many of us actually pays sales or income taxes. parking tickets and all the other stuff that generates revenues for guyana. instead all of the business people turn their money into us to maintain that mansion in miami or new york. where is the usa in all of this there are 2 americans on that aircraft. the marines and special forces are nearby. we had all of these resources here in the us and we still could not find steve fosset.
look at the resources we have here and osama is still running loose .
I believe this link will answer a lot of questions regarding ELT’s and SAR Ops etc. SarTech has made the most accurate, reasonable statement about ELT’s to date. http://www.casaraontario.ca/~ottawa1/Presentations/elthoming.ppt Pay particular attention to the photos of the crash at 500 ft. and at 200 ft (bearing in mind that those pictures are of an open forest, not dense jungle). The King Air is not all that much bigger than the light plane depicted.
African, I am a helicopter and fixed wing pilot, I fly for an oil company, I have been involved in various search and rescue operations, both land and sea, I have carried technicians monitoring ELTs, the mechanism uses a grid system with an electronic map, once you pick up a signal, you record your position at the time, then you coordinate other aircraft in which direction to fly, each aircraft will then report the signal strength they recieve, this way you eliminate the areas where there is lost of signal and a least one aircraft remains where it is recieving the signal. I have found a few aircraft this way. Do you think it is audacious of me to say that the foreign pilots do not know Guyana’s jungle. Do these pilots fly in Guyana’s hinterlands on a day -to-day basis? Do they have the same experience as our pilots, in our jungle? They are there to assist in the search, not co-ordinate the search. The problem is not if they have bush-flying experience, it is if they are aquainted with Guyana’s jungle. I would rather a Guyanese show me around Guyana than a foreigner. Reports say that they have picked up a weak signal, are they still recieving this signal or have they lost it?
8R-DAW I would like to apologize for my previous remarks. My frustrations with the situation got the better of me. Knowing the missing pilots’ and searchers’ experience enables me to answer a lot of these kind of questions. Everyone down there are my friends and co-workers and it makes me a little defensive on their behalf. Let’s hope and pray that they will be found soon…