Search For Missing Aircraft Shifts

After spending two days scouring the eastern slopes of the Cascades, searchers looking for a small twin-engine plane carrying two Alaska men shifted Tuesday to Western Washington.

“There’s been a couple of sightings, but they turned up to be nothing,” state aviation director Bill Brubaker said.

The Cessna 337, piloted by Dennis Waldock, 57, with his passenger Leo Walsh, 74, both of Anchorage, was last heard from at midday Saturday near Ellensburg on a flight from Lewistown, Mont., to Western Washington.

Waldock told a controller he was canceling his instrument flight plan. He said he was having trouble with his autopilot and likely would head to Boeing Field in Seattle to have it fixed, said Mac MacSpadden, the incident commander overseeing the search.

Radar lost track of the plane at 5,800 feet about four miles east of Ellensburg, MacSpadden said.

Searchers using radar-track data from the Federal Aviation Administration searched the area from Ellensburg west to Snoqualmie Pass, but found nothing Sunday or Monday, Brubaker said.

Tuesday, the search was switched to the Cascades’ western slopes from Snoqualmie Pass southward.