Day 3 of search for missing plane in northern Ontario

Massive resources have been deployed in northern Ontario as the search continues for a commercial plane and its two occupants that went missing in a remote area earlier this week.

A Cessna 208 left Nakina – located nearly 350 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay – around 12:30 p.m. Tuesday en route to Eabametoong First Nation, also known as Fort Hope.

SEARCH AND RESCUE EFFORTS

"After it didn't arrive for about an hour, that's when the company called the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre Trenton and they launched an RCAF Hercules out of Winnipeg to begin the search efforts. And those search efforts continue today," Maj. Trevor Reid of the Trenton Joint Rescue Coordination Centre (JRCC) told CTV News in a Zoom interview Friday morning.

Reid said the day the plane went missing there were some clouds and then light snow, which he said hampered the search on the first night.

"Currently, we have eight aircraft assigned to the mission. That includes two air force Hercules, two Griffon helicopters, as well as helicopters from the Ontario Provincial Police, Ministry of Natural Resources, the Canadian Coast Guard, and we've also got an aircraft from the Civil Air Search and Rescue Association of Canada (CASARA) that's joining the search as well. CASARA, as it's called, also has spotters on board our air force aircraft," he said.

Three more aircraft, two from CASARA and an air force Cormorant helicopter, are also expected to join the search efforts Friday, he said.

A task force has been set up in Thunder Bay to enable the JRCC, based out of southern Ontario, to have the aerial vehicles involved closer to the search area.

"So including like our ground crews, our maintainers -- who are, obviously, important to making sure we have serviceable aircraft to fly -- we've got about 50 people in Thunder Bay plus additional staff in Belleville, near Trenton, where the search headquarters is stood up and being run," Reid said.

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ABOUT THE SEARCH AREA

For the last two days, the search effort has been concentrated in the 150-kilometre area expected flight route of the missing plane.

"Certainly, the terrain is challenging for our crews. It's very snowy, treed area with some lakes and valleys," Reid said.

"Although it's flat, there are still some 3D elements to the search area with some hills and valleys, so we basically use our helicopters to kind of get into those valleys, get around hills, while the aircraft, the fixed-wing aircraft, are able to fly overhead and kind of get that larger field of view over the search area."

It's an area that has limited to no cell service and he said the missing plane did not have a 406 satellite beacon on board.

"We continue to search electronically in hopes that there may be another signal, such as a 121.5 ELT, that we might be able to hear," Reid said.

He said aircraft are equipped with radios, but there were no distress calls from the plane.

Friday, crews are starting to broaden the search.

TWO PEOPLE MISSING

Reid said he is not at liberty to disclose the name of the company that owns the plane or the identities of the two people on board.

"I can't necessarily speak to their identities because I don't know at what point the company is in terms of their like notification of family and next of kin, but we have been in contact with the owner of the company and certainly they are helping us with this search effort," he said.

Flight crews are encouraged to always carry survival gear regardless of the season, Reid said.

"Warm clothes, extra food, water, things like that to enhance somebody's ability to survive on the ground in the event of a plane crash," he said.

"We don't necessarily have full visibility on what the crew of this aircraft may have had on board with respect to survival equipment though."

As far as next steps, it is still very much an active search with crews concentrating on covering the search area most effectively.

"We certainly never speculate as to what the next steps might be," Reid said.

"We take these searches literally minute by minute and hour by hour, day by day because focusing on the here and now makes us able to really concentrate on what it is we are doing. We try not to get ahead of ourselves too much."