A couple’s plane, missing since dropping off the radar in 1997, has been found in a Michigan forest.
The plane, a single-engine Piper, took off Sept. 14, 1997, from the Lake Huron area and was piloted by Mark Davies, then 45, WNEM reported. Davies and his wife Janet didn't file a flight plan for their trip to Howell, 300 miles south.
At the time, the National Transportation Safety Board said the plane was seen on radar flying south, then turning to the north before disappearing, WNEM reported. Friends and family members searched for four days but didn’t find the plane or the couple.
When a forester stumbled on the wreckage, he said it looked like no one had been in the area for decades, WNEM reported. K-9 units and police hiked uphill more than a mile on Thursday to find the plane after matching the tail number to the Davies’ missing plane.
A friend of the couple, Ted Sarrach, told Fox2 that Janet, who was known as Jen, was a high school art teacher and Mark, a mechanic, worked at a Ford dealership. They had only been married a short time and didn’t have children, Sarrach said.
“Pretty much everyone had given up hope that they’d be found in our lifetimes,” Janet Davies’ brother Michael Smith told WPBN. According to Smith, Mark Davies was “not that experienced” as a pilot.
Smith also said he would give a DNA sample to test with remains found at the site, which he hopes will identify his sister, WPBN reported. Family members plan to have a small memorial for the couple.
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