Four southern Alberta men have been confirmed dead after an overdue airplane was located Friday with no survivors.
Global News spoke with a family member who confirmed the four men from Warner, Alta. did not survive.
The United States Air Force Rescue Coordination Center (AFCC) confirmed early Friday it was searching for an overdue airplane. The U.S. Civil Air Patrol was also conducting searches in Colorado, Utah and New Mexico.
According to the Colorado Wing Civil Air Patrol (CAP), the wreckage of the plane was found by search crews near Dolores, Colorado on Friday evening.
A spokesperson from the CAP told the Associated Press the plane crashed in a rutted area with canyons covered with snow.
In a statement, CAP said searchers made the discovery after triangulating the downed plane’s emergency locator transmitter signal. Ground teams found the wreckage at about 4:50 p.m. local time, the New Mexico Wing mission incident commander, Lt. Col. Jon Hitchcock, said.
“None of the four people aboard the aircraft survived,” authorities said.
Jamie Metzger told Global News that her father, Bill Kaupp, 64, her brother, Clint Kaupp, 28, and two family friends, Tim Mueller, 28, and Ron Mckenzie, 66, were missing.
“It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that the plane has been located with no survivors,” Kaupp Family Farms posted on its Facebook page.
“In the future I will talk about how great the four people that we lost were to everyone that knew them, but for now we are going to grieve.”
Their plane departed from Grand Junction Regional Airport in Colorado at around 10 a.m. on Thursday on its way to Albuquerque, New Mexico, she said in a Facebook post from her family farm’s account.
CAP said the plane dropped off the radar about 30 minutes after takeoff.
The wreckage was found in Utah about four nautical miles from the Colorado state line, roughly halfway between Monticello, Utah, and Dove Creek, Colorado, on the west side of some high terrain.
— With files from The Associated Press and Global’s Emily Mertz
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