By
The Associated Press
SWEETWATER, Ariz. - A search team discovered the wreckage of a small plane and two dead passengers in northeastern Arizona yesterday.
Once the weather cleared enough for a search plane to fly over the wreck site, authorities described the downed aircraft as a red and white, single-engine plane with a Colorado owner. They said two people, a man and a woman, were dead at the scene.
"It crashed into the side of a canyon so it's going to take a while to get to it," said Capt. Francis Bradley of the Navajo Nation police.
The wreck was spotted early yesterday in a canyon at Pestora Peak, 11 miles southwest of Teec Nos Pos in the Four Corners area of the Navajo Reservation, Bradley said.
About 20 officers from the Navajo Nation Police and the Apache County Sheriff's Office had been searching for the plane since it was reported missing Sunday night by the Civil Air Patrol in Phoenix.
Bad weather had hampered initial attempts to launch an aerial search yesterday morning. By afternoon, Bradley said the search team was trying to get to the crash site on the ground while watching another storm move in.
Capt. Patrick Brown, the incident commander for the Civil Air Patrol, said the patrol received a call Sunday that an aircraft emergency locating transmitter was going off in northern Arizona.
The patrol pinpointed the location and contacted local authorities.
Officials with the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board said they have received no reports of overdue aircraft from the area of the crash.
"Once we get some people there on the ground who can poke around, we'll know a little more," said Howard Plagens, an investigator with NTSB.
