Pair, Plane Missing Since Friday

With an angel on her lapel and family always within an arm’s reach, Leslie Morgan whispered tearfully Monday that she would see her husband again.

Tim Morgan and his flying instructor disappeared three days earlier doing the one thing they loved to do - fly.

Standing in the hangar at Felts Field where they had admired so many aircraft and traded dreams of traveling, Leslie Morgan could do nothing but hope that her 40-year-old husband would return.

“He’s a survivor. He really will come through this,” Morgan said while her mother held her. “I know we’re going to find him.”

The single-engine Cessna 152 that Tim Morgan was in disappeared soon after leaving Felts Field on a routine flying lesson Friday afternoon. Witnesses last saw the white-and-yellow airplane buzz the nearly defunct Horse Haven airstrip about 20 miles northeast of Coeur d’Alene and disappear.

Witnesses said the plane came in over the south end of the airstrip about 30 feet off the ground, flew the length of the pocked dirt run way, banked right at the north end and “that’s the last anyone saw of the plane,” said Lt. L.A. “Skip” Rapp, of the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Department, gesturing toward the timber where the plane was last seen. The runway sits in a narrow valley, between steep, densely-timbered ridges, just above the Little North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River. The intervening draws are packed with snow, making the search for a mostly white airplane ferociously difficult.

“It’s like looking for a grain of salt in a sugar bowl,” Lt. Rapp said.

Kootenai County deputies, Sheriff’s Posse, Search and Rescue, Civil Air Patrol and U.S. Forest Service rangers started searching the Horse Haven area Saturday afternoon on foot, horseback, with four-wheel motorcycles and the help of a private helicopter.

Sunday, a helicopter from Fairchild Air Force Base and a Med Star helicopter joined the effort.

A military helicopter stationed in Great Falls, Mont. did duty for 2-1/2 hours Monday, but weather forced it to sit out much of the day. Eighteen volunteers continued the Idaho ground search. They were joined by the instructor’s family, which asked that the man’s name not be released.

An equally intense search has been under way in Washington since the plane was reported missing. But the small Cessna hadn’t been found as darkness forced teams to stop their search for the evening Monday.

“It’s very frustrating,” said Dick Shortridge, a retired Air Force pilot and member of the Washington Civil Air Patrol who had flown two search missions Monday. “You’re hoping you’ll see something. We try not to get discouraged.”

There have been at least two airplane accidents involving this back-country Idaho airstrip, which is essentially closed to all but emergency landings, Rapp said. The most recent, about 1991, involved a couple that came in low but couldn’t land because of motorcycles on the strip.

They also banked to climb out of the valley but didn’t clear the trees. Both walked away from the wreckage, Rapp said.

All day Monday, while planes lifted and landed with crews looking for clues, the families of the missing men were invited to join workers and learn about the efforts being made to find Morgan and his instructor.

Leslie Morgan said her husband had flown earlier Friday, just tagging along while someone else did flight instrument training.

“Any chance to fly, he would love to,” Morgan said. “He would say, `Whenever I dream, I’m always flying.”’ Morgan, who was nearing his examination to receive Federal Aviation Administration certification, had scheduled the Friday flight to fine tune his skills, said Jerry Taylor, scene commander for the Washington Department of Transportation.

There was no flight plan filed because local flights do not require one.

“It was supposed to be very routine,” Taylor said. “They were just going up to polish last-minute things.”

The plane disappeared off of radar near Mica Peak.

Since Saturday, pilots have been sent out to search in quadrants of 48 square miles apiece.

Saturday and Sunday were frustrating, Taylor said. There were few leads to work with.

“The complexion of this search changes as the days go on,” Taylor said.

Though the plane was equipped with a electronic locator transmitter, an elaborate setup of radios, transmitters and receivers have not been able to pick up the signal, said Tom Buckner, who is running ground communications with the search planes.

“We’re looking for lots of different clues,” Shortridge said. “Those clues have led us to those places.”

The search has involved about 140 volunteers and more than 30 planes in Eastern Washington and North Idaho. Agencies involved on the Washington side include the Civil Air Patrol, Washington Air Search and Rescue, the Washington Department of Transportation and the American Red Cross.

By Monday, local residents began calling in tips and providing new information.

“We take basically everything we get,” said Civil Air Patrol Lt. Col. Karl Moore. “We don’t give up on anything.”

But weather got the best of the crews about noon Monday. They were grounded for several hours because of rain and wind, Taylor said.

“We’re looking for two souls,” he said. “We don’t want to be looking for more.”

Taylor and his team spent many hours with the families of the missing men Monday.

Both families spent the day at Felts Field, learning about the operations, being regularly briefed on progress and riding along on search flights.

“They want to do something,” Taylor said. “They’ve got to go out and see what we’re faced with.

“That way they’re not left with the feeling there were a lot of things that didn’t get done.”

Family friends have driven nearly 1,000 miles of terrain searching in Eastern Washington and North Idaho since Saturday.

Morgan’s 19-year-old son, Justin, flew in from Arizona on Monday afternoon and immediately took search and rescue teams up on an offer to go up in a plane and help look.

Leslie Morgan said it’s that kind of love and enthusiasm from everyone involved that keeps her believing that her husband is alive.

“It’s going to take all of us to find them,” she said. “I’m very hopeful. He’ll have such a story to tell when he gets back.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: TO HELP Whom to call Anyone with information about the missing aircraft should call officials during the day at (206) 940-9366 or evenings at (253) 854-1089.