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Wreckage Of Plane Missing Four Years Possibly Found In Grand Canyon National Park

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Wreckage possibly from a single-engine plane that disappeared in 2011 has been recovered from the bottom of Grand Canyon National Park with skeletal human remains.

While official identification of the remains was pending, it was being presumed that the wreckage was from a home-built experimental aircraft that departed Grand Canyon Airport at Tusayan on March 11, 2011. Piloting that aircraft was Joseph Radford of Glendale, Arizona. According to a National Transportation Safety Board investigation that year, one theory was that the man deliberately crashed into the canyon.

The wreckage was found May 20 by a private boating trip. The boaters told park rangers that during a hike near Emerald Canyon at Colorado River Mile 104 they found the wreckage with human remains inside, a park release said Tuesday.

Inclement weather prevented rangers from responding to the scene via helicopter until this past Sunday. Rangers first recovered the remains, which await identification from the Coconino County Medical Examiner, then packaged the plane in a sling load and recovered it using a long-line, the park reported.

The plane that went missing in 2011 was a red RV6 homebuilt experimental aircraft, the park release said. At the time, the Park Service used both a fixed-wing airplane and a helicopter in search efforts that covered 2,000 air miles over a 600 square-mile search area. Civil Air Patrol’s Nevada Wing, Coconino County Sheriff’s Office and the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center assisted in that search. Search activities continued on a limited basis after April 1, 2011.

 

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