Small medical plane with 4 aboard goes missing in California

ARCATA, Calif. — A small medical transport plane with four people aboard went missing early Friday after the pilot reported smoke filling the cockpit, setting off a search across a densely forested mountain range in Northern California.

The pilot of the Piper PA31 declared an emergency around 1 a.m. as he flew a flight nurse, a transport medic and a patient about 360 miles from Crescent City, near the Oregon border, to Oakland, officials said.

The plane lost contact early in the flight path, the Federal Aviation Administration said. The pilot planned to return to Crescent City before vanishing from radar 5 miles north of the Arcata-Eureka Airport on the far northern coast, FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said.

A crew on the ground is combing a remote area owned by a private timber company until thick fog lifts in the early afternoon. That’s when a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter will assist in the search, said Lt. Wayne Hanson of the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office, which is leading the pursuit on the ground.

“We’re narrowing down the search efforts to a possible site,” Hanson said.

The plane is part of Cal-Ore Life Flight, a small company of about six planes that transports patients throughout Northern California and Oregon. Flights at night are common, said Don Wharton, a spokesman for parent company REACH Air Medical Services.

“It is an active search,” Wharton said. “We’re trying to remain very positive and hopeful that the results of the search are the best outcome.”