Missing plane: search over

It's not the outcome the Royal Canadian Air Force was hoping for.

The search for a missing B.C. couple last seen taking off in a plane from Cranbrook has officially come to an end.

It’s been 13 days of relentless searching by the RCAF and Civil Air Search and Rescue Association.

“We’ve searched 575 hours in the air, over 37,000 square kilometres over the course of the search,” said Lt.-Col. Bryn Elliott.

Alex Simons, 21, who was piloting the plane, and Sidney Robillard, 24, took off in the Piper Warrior on June 8 from Lethbridge. They were expected to arrive in Kamloops, but never arrived.

More than 200 people have been involved in the search.

“We’ve gotten to search the entire area and some higher probability areas more than once, and now that we haven’t found anything, we are satisfied that we can stand down,” said Elliott.

Two aircraft are scouring back over high-probability areas for the seventh time on Tuesday, but will pack up their search at the end of the day.

Elliot said the thing that has been against them is the terrain.

“The wingspan of the airplane is 35 feet, the area we are searching is very high mountains up to 10,000 feet. The airplane was white, we are looking in areas that still have snow. Our crews were experiencing snow, hail, rain in there, and the canopy is so dense," he said.

“We searched it to an excellent level, but it wasn’t the outcome we were looking for, unfortunately."