By David Grant Long and Jim Mimiaga

A search for a missing plane got under way in southwest Colorado and New Mexico yesterday morning after the pilot’s family reported Tuesday that he had never arrived at his destination near El Paso, Texas, after taking off from the Montrose airport Sunday morning.

A man identified as C. Brasier, with no address listed, was only person on board when the twin-engine Cessna 421 took off from the Montrose airport around 9 a.m. Sunday, according to Mitch Barker, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Agency’s regional office in Seattle. Local authorities refused to identify the missing man yesterday, but he was reportedly an experienced pilot from Montrose.

Because Brasier hadn’t filed a flight plan, Barker explained yesterday, the FAA hadn’t been aware the plane was missing until his family reported it. The eight-passenger plane, described as white with a red stripe, was supposed to be flying directly to Santa Teresa, N.M., with no stops, Barker said, but no word had been received from the pilot since take-off.

"There wasn’t a flight plan filed, so it wasn’t something the FAA began the search on," he said. "It was initiated when somebody called in a report of a missing airplane."

The Colorado Civil Air Patrol based its search efforts at the Cortez airport and had as many as five search planes in the air throughout the day.

"We were notified last night about 5:30 p.m.," said CCAP spokesman Leonard Ginther Wednesday. "Right now we don’t have a lot of information —we have people gathering information on the pilot and aircraft (and) we have people in the vicinity searching. They did an ‘all-call’ last night for Civil Air Patrol (volunteers)."

The rugged San Juan mountains present a special challenge to anyone attempting to fly through them, Ginther explained.

"It’s kind of hard to determine what his exact route was going to be because there was some mountain obscuration," he said. "There are kind of aircraft highways up there, but we’re not sure which ones he was following." It is not unusual for pilots of light planes to not file flight plans, he said.

"That’s part of the challenge of this kind of search," he added, "to figure out what route he chose and try to find it."

By yesterday afternoon, the local search had focused on the Groundhog Reservoir area about 30 miles northeast of Cortez. Local CAP spokesperson Lori Watkins said the plane had last been observed on Denver radar in that area about 10 a.m. Sunday, or an hour after take-off.

Search pilots speculated Brasier may have been flying low to get under the storm that swept through the San Juans on Sunday. One pilot, who would identify himself only as Captain Catlow, said the antenna that broadcasts the plane’s locator beacon might have been sheared off in the crash.

"There’s been no signal," Catlow said, "but if we can get in close enough, we could still possibly pick one up." A high-altitude helicopter is supposed to be brought in from Eagle tomorrow to facilitate closer scrutiny of the area, according to Watkins.

Snowmobiles and volunteers were being rounded up and transported to the Groundhog area to conduct a ground search yesterday afternoon, she explained, because the dense oak brush could obscure any wreckage from the air.