Missing plane was reportedly flying too low

After two days of unsuccessfully combing the rough, wild terrain of northwestern Montana, authorities pledged Tuesday to keep looking for four people who never returned from an afternoon of sightseeing in a small airplane.

The 1968 Piper Arrow single- engine plane was rented by a recent University of Montana graduate who had gotten his pilot's license about a year ago, with his friend and two newspaper reporters from the Daily Inter Lake of Kalispell as passengers.

Sonny Kless, 25, flew Brian Williams and reporters Melissa Weaver and Erika Hoefer into Glacier National Park airspace, then south across Flathead Lake to the bison range, authorities said, c i t i n g Fe d e ra l Av i a t i o n Administration radar data.

Several witnesses in the area reportedly saw the blueand- white plane flying low over the Flathead River to the west of the range, Cooley said. The witnesses said the plane did not appear to be experiencing mechanical problems.

"Everyone said the same thing — it was flying very, very low," Cooley said.

A ground search with allterrain vehicles and horseback riders was concentrated around the Flathead River from the town of Dixon several miles upstream from where it meets the Clark Fork River. Boats equipped with sonar patrolled the river and searched several of the dense, brushy islands that dot it.

The air search covered a much larger area, from the rolling green hills of the range to the mountains farther east, and involved nearly a dozen aircraft.

Even friends and family members of Kless, the pilot, joined in the search, apparently frustrated by waiting at the makeshift command center the searchers set up.

But with rain and hail rolling into the search area Tuesday evening, authorities suspended the search from dusk until first light today, Lake County sheriff's spokeswoman Carey Cooley said.

Cooley said she didn't know whether the same manpower would be available to search today — most searchers are volunteers who have day jobs, she said.

FAA radar data put the plane's altitude at 300 feet before it disappeared. Witnesses told searchers they believe it was flying even lower, Cooley said.

"Five hundred feet is the absolute minimum, and that's like in the middle of Kansas with nothing around," said FAA spokesman Mike Fergus. "If he's flying 300 feet above the ground, that's illegal."

Kless' mother, Janelle Gentry of Kalispell, said her son just graduated from the University of Montana and obtained his pilot's license about a year ago. She said Kless has flown the Glacier National Park-Flathead Lake- Flathead River loop several times.

"Sonny aspired to be a pilot ever since he was 15 years old," Gentry said.

Thirty of Kless' 100 hours total flight time was in that Pi p e r Ar row, s a i d J o e l Woodruff, general manager of Northstar Jet Inc., of Missoula and owner of the plane.

"His flight instructor has conveyed to me that he was an exceptional flight student with sound judgment and a natural ability to fly," Woodruff wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

Kless rented the plane Sunday but didn't leave a flight plan, Woodruff said.

Kless last made radio contact with the tower at Glacier Park International Airport at 2:11 p.m. Sunday, about 40 minutes after takeoff. At least one text message was exchanged between Weaver and Hoefer's cell phones about an hour after that.

Flathead County Sheriff Mike Meehan said Hoefer, 27, last updated her Facebook page about 10 minutes after taking off, writing: "We're flying to the park and we're later going to a barbecue." Weaver's roommate contacted authorities when she didn't return.

Weaver, 23, covers police and courts. Hoefer is a business reporter for the newspaper from Beloit, Wis. Both began working for the newspaper at the end of last year.

Kless is a friend of Wi l l iams, a Universi ty of Montana law student, who is friends with the two reporters, said Wendy Martin, the pilot's girlfriend.

She called several of Kless' friends with backpacking experience, and they left the command center Tuesday afternoon to search the area themselves.

Kless is listed by the Montana Department of Justice as a violent offender for a 2003 robbery. Kless confessed to robbing a gas station in Elk Mountain, Wyo., armed with a shotgun and wearing a ski mask.

He was sentenced to three to five years in prison in December 2003 and released on probation seven months later, Montana De p a r tment o f Corrections spokesman Bob Anez said.

Gentry said the robbery was a mistake Kless made as a teenager going through a rough patch. She said he was planning a post-graduation trip to Europe before heading to Taiwan to teach English.