On Monday, April 10, Washington State Department of Transportation Air Search and Rescue crews successfully identified a missing 2006 Cessna T182 Turbo Skylane piloted by Rod Collen in the wooded forests near Queets. The pilot was discovered deceased inside the aircraft, likely dying upon impact. He had been missing for 36 days. The Collen family has been notified and briefed of today’s events.
Mr. Collen departed from the Tacoma Narrows Airport at 5:35 p.m., Monday, March 6, and his plane fell off radar abruptly 45 minutes later. WSDOT and partners searched a 36-square-mile wooded area for two weeks, and suspended the search on March 20 after finding no trace of the pilot or aircraft. On Friday, April 7, crews returned to the area using a new hypothesis of what may have happened to the plane provided by a search and rescue partner in British Columbia. Search conditions had improved greatly thanks to the warmer weather, which had made earlier efforts of locating a white plane difficult in snow.