Well, this is embarrassing…..

[st27]

“A month after authorities called off the search, family members of one of the pilots of an aircraft that went missing in Ontario have found the wreckage. Brian Slingerland’s family chartered a plane and spent most of last Saturday searching an area near the last known position of the Piper Comanche Slingerland and his friend John Fehr had recently purchased and were ferrying back to their homes in Alberta, more than 1,500 miles west. They found the wreckage less than five miles from the point of last radar contact of the plane in Lake Superior Provincial Park.

The duo took off from Dehli, Ontario, about 100 miles west of Buffalo, New York, to Marathon, Ontario, about 100 miles north of Sault Ste Marie, Michigan, on April 14. After the plane disappeared, searchers flew about 350 hours trying to find the plane but the search was called off April 24. Authorities say they don’t know what the family did that the searchers didn’t to find the wreckage. “I’m not sure what tactics they were employing,” Ontario Provincial Police detective Trevor Tremblay told local media. “But they found the aircraft about seven kilometres from the last known point on radar.”

[Kip Powick]

I can remember a search we did, (Halifax RCC), and we found a light twin about  10 miles from the point of departure and the only reason a tasked C-130 found it was that an eagle eyed spotter  at one of the side doors spotted a small part of the vertical stab, (white), that was stuck on the top of a tree in a heavily wooded area. 

Aircraft that go down in a wooded area are hard to find because they normally don't do much damage to the trees and the trees just snap back upright once the aircraft has penetrated the trees.

There was an awful lot of aircraft, and man power expended on the posted search and thee comes a time where the RCC has to downgrade the search and hand it over to the police, (Land search)

Had a single engine go down in the bay of Fundy...Boaters saw it go down about 4 miles off shore. Got to the wreckage but no one in it. Just a pile of neatly folded clothes.

Body was found about 6 months later in a wooded area by a hunter, about 4 miles inland. Not a schred of clothing on the remains...Verdict= suicide