Police and volunteers continued Tuesday looking for Richard Martin, the 82-year-old pilot whose plane disappeared Sunday.
Sunday began like most others for Martin. He and his wife drove to Dowagiac Municipal Airport around 11 a.m. Their routine was for Martin to fly around the area for a couple hours while his wife waits at the airport for his return.
But he never returned.
Dowagiac police have asked Michigan State Police, the Civil Air Patrol, the FAA and U.S. Air Force to help search for the plane by air, and those efforts continued Tuesday.
Martin was flying an experimental fixed-wing, single-engine Sonex plane, one that he built from a kit in 2005, according to Federal Aviation Administration records.
Radar indicate Martin flew north of Dowagiac, into Van Buren County. Much of the ground search is happening there. Martin didn’t file a flight plan, and he usually doesn’t do so, said Dowagiac Deputy Police Chief Kevin Roman.
“We’ve had some tips that came in that mentioned a low-flying plane, or a plane that’s flying erratically,” Roman said. “But nothing of the sort of, ‘I saw the plane physically crash.’ We’ve heard nothing of that sort of nature.”
