COLUMBUS, Ohio – A dive team was assembled in Cleveland on Saturday to begin recovery efforts for a small plane carrying six people that disappeared over Lake Erie near Cleveland’s shores.
Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson expressed condolences to the family and friends of those who lost loved ones, as the city took over from the U.S. Coast Guard after an extensive search effort ended in disappointment.
John T. Fleming, chief executive of a Columbus-based beverage distribution company, was piloting the plane. His wife, Suzanne, their two teenage sons, John “Jack” and Andrew, and two neighbours whose names have not yet been released were aboard.
READ MORE: U.S. Coast Guard searching for 6 people after plane goes missing over Lake Erie
Fleming’s father, John W. Fleming, told The Columbus Dispatch the family and friends were attending a Cleveland Cavaliers basketball game.
“We’re just in shock,” he told the newspaper.
The Coast Guard suspended its search Friday for the plane that vanished shortly after takeoff Thursday night from the city’s lakeshore airport.
Officials said divers and other marine experts were meeting to set a recovery strategy to be run out of a unified command centre at Burke Lakefront Airport. They planned to begin the search at the last point of contact with the small aircraft.
Tracking service FlightAware logged only three location pings for the plane after takeoff from Burke Lakefront Airport, and the last one indicated rapid altitude loss. Authorities have said there were no distress signals from the pilot.
Airport Commissioner Khalid Bahhur said such accidents are a rare occurrence for the airport.
A twin-engine Beechcraft Baron with one person aboard crashed into Lake Erie after taking off from Burke in January 2008. Szabo recalled search efforts to recover the body of the pilot took five or six days. He said the safety of the divers and others involved in the recovery will be weighed as the effort proceeds.
“We’re going to do everything possible,” Bahhur said. “Like I said, the boat’s in the water right now and the dive team is preparing themselves to go out. It’s going to be on a day-to-day basis, and we’re not going to risk other people.”
The aircraft took off westward from Burke on Thursday, then turned north across the lake, according to the tracking service flightradar24.com. The departure procedure at Burke could take an aircraft over the lake before turning south toward a destination, Mullen said.
The plane, which had made the roughly half-hour trip from Columbus earlier in the day, was registered to a limited liability company under the same Columbus address as Superior Beverage Group, the company where Fleming was president and CEO.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the Cessna Citation 525 plane left Burke at 10:50 p.m., and the Coast Guard said it was notified about the missing plane by air traffic control at Burke about 30 minutes later.
The aircraft was headed to Ohio State University Airport, northwest of downtown Columbus.
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Associated Press writers Mark Gillispie in Cleveland, Kantele Franko in Columbus and David Koenig in Dallas contributed to this report.
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