Missing Alberta plane found crashed in Utah with no survivors

Search crews have found a small plane from Alberta which crashed with four people on board while en route to New Mexico. There were no survivors.

U.S. Civil Air Patrol spokesman Dan Bailey confirmed the Piper Lance was discovered just before 5 p.m. MT on Friday in a mountainous area of Utah close to the Colorado border.

It was "roughly halfway between Monticello, Utah, and Dove Creek, Colorado," Bailey told CBC News.

A search plane from Albuquerque, N.M., was able to home in on the signal from the plane's emergency transmitter and guide search crews on the ground to the area, he said.

New Dayton, Alta., resident Jon Kaupp said his brother, father and two family friends took off in the plane from Cut Bank, Mont., on Wednesday but were forced to land at a the regional airport in Grand Junction, Colo., in bad weather.

The aircraft took off from Grand Junction at 10 a.m. MT on Thursday, bound for Albuquerque, but did not arrive at its destination, he said.

Pilot Bill Kaupp, 64, Clint Kaupp, 28, Tim Mueller, 28, and Ron Mckenzie, 66, were on the flight, CBC News has confirmed.

Kaupp said he became worried when he was unable to reach his father, Bill Kaupp, by phone at 5 p.m., by which time the plane should have landed in Albuquerque.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Civil Air Patrol said the plane went off radar at 10:30 a.m. MT.

Officials with the Federal Aviation Agency and the National Transportation Safety Board are making their way to the crash site. The NTSB will be in charge of the investigation.

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