Alberta plane reported missing on flight out of Colorado

A small plane from southern Alberta with four people on board has been reported missing in the United States.

Jon Kaupp said his brother, father and two family friends took off from an airport in Cut Bank, Mont., on Wednesday in a Piper Lance and were forced to land in Grand Junction, Colo., in bad weather.

CBC News has confirmed Clint Kaupp, 28, Tim Mueller, 28, pilot Bill Kaupp, 64, and Ron Mckenzie, 66, were on the flight.

The aircraft left the regional airport in Grand Junction at 10 a.m. MT Thursday for Albuquerque, but did not arrive at its destination, he said.

Kaupp said he became worried when he was unable to reach his father, Bill Kaupp, by phone at 5 p.m., by which time the plane should have landed in Albuquerque.

"I started calling around to different airports down there, trying to figure out where they might be," he said.

"I was positive they weren't in Albuquerque, because they'd have cell service there."

Tim Mueller, 28, and Klint Kaupp, 28, are two of the four men missing after the small aircraft they were traveling on went missing on a flight that took off from Grand Junction, Colo., en route to Albuquerque, N.M. (Facebook)

Kaupp said he paid to place a targeted ad on Facebook in the hope of reaching someone associated with the small airports along the flight path.

The family tweeted on Friday, asking people to help get them in touch with airports between Grand Junction and Albuquerque.

Long shot but if anyone knows anyone who works at an airport between Grand Junction and Albuquerque, my family was flying their plane and went missing around noon today, if anyone heard anything from C-GYGY please, anything
— @kauppfarms

By early evening, Kaupp contacted the U.S. Air Force Rescue Co-ordination Center to report the plane as missing.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Civil Air Patrol said the plane went off radar at 10:30 a.m. MT

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) told CBC News that crews were searching for a Canadian-registered Piper Lance plane, whose last known position was Grand Junction en route to Albuquerque.

Cmdr. Evan Gardner of the U.S. Air Force Rescue Co-ordination Center said his team enlisted the U.S. Civil Air Patrol to lead the search, which is focused in the southern Utah area, based on radar and cell forensics analysis that was done on Thursday night.

Ron McKenzie, 66, was also on board the plane that failed to land in New Mexico after taking off from Colorado. (Carmen Antal)

"The combined reports helped narrow the search area," the U.S. Civil Air Patrol's Lt. Col. John Henderson said in a release.

The ground search began Friday at dawn in a section of Utah about 210 kilometres southwest of Grand Junction.

Two ground crews and aircraft from New Mexico are involved in the search, but they have so far been hampered by bad weather, Gardner said.

The missing Piper Lance aircraft left from Cut Bank in Montana before landing in Grand Junction, Colo., because of bad weather. It then left from the regional airport there, but did not arrive in its destination in Albuquerque. (CBC)