Weather postpones search for missing plane

Thursday, Feb. 26, 2004 | 10:39 a.m.

Rainy weather forced airborne search and rescue teams to again postpone their search for two missing men and the plane they were flying when they took off Feb. 15 from North Las Vegas Airport.

Volunteers from the Nevada, California and Arizona Civil Air Patrols, an auxiliary of the Air Force, have found no signs of the plane or its passengers in their search of the desert area between Las Vegas and Palm Springs, Calif.

Volunteers had resumed their search Wednesday but were grounded this morning because of the rain, Maj. Cynthia S. Ryan said.

"We have a 500-foot ceiling with the rain, and that's not flyable," Ryan said.

The search began two days after Marine Lt. Russell Bates and his passenger, Casey Ferrone, were last seen, when Bates did not report for duty at Camp Pendleton, Ryan said.

Bates and Ferrone, a schoolteacher, had rented a Piper Cherokee from Montgomery field, near San Diego, for a weekend trip to Las Vegas.

The plane last made radar contact around Jean, Ryan said. The three-state Civil Air Patrol team has patrolled more than 900 square miles by aircraft, retraced the plane's route into Las Vegas and searched the borders along Nevada, Arizona and California but have not found anything, she said.

The three-state team will investigate a radar contact a rescue coordinator made with an unidentified plane this morning, Ryan said, but there is no indication the contact was from Bates' plane.