KNOXVILLE (WVLT) – The government of Guyana has officially called off its search for a missing airplane that disappeared over its airspace with an East Tennessee man in the cockpit.
Christopher Paris, 23 of Lenoir City was co-pilot of the twin engine Beach King aircraft when it lost contact with the ground about one hour after taking off from a runway in Georgetown, Guyana on November 1st. Also on board were pilot Wes Barker, 28 of Salem, South Carolina and Patrick Murphy, a Canadian geophysics technician.
Paris and Barker work for Dynamic Aviation, a Bridgewater, Virginia based company which charters airplanes. They were hired earlier this year by U308 Corp., a Canadian mining company that hopes to find uranium in Guyana. When their aircraft was last heard from, they were conducting a geophysical survey over part of the dense section of the Amazon rain forest.
Since the plane went missing, rescue teams have poured hundreds of hours into locating the three men or wreckage of their aircraft. Several organizations have conducted searches including the British Air Force, Guyana Defense Force, and Guyana Civil Aviation Authority. Employees from Dynamic Aviation and U308 Corp. have also participated in both aerial and ground based patrols.
On November 8th, rescue teams detected a signal from the missing planes picked up from their emergency locator beacon, but crews were unable to pinpoint its location before losing it. The signal has not been detected since.
Stabroek News, a daily newspaper based out of Guyana’s capital, reported the announcement in its Tuesday edition. The paper quoted Guyana Minister of Transport and Hydraulics Robeson Benn saying, “As difficult as it may seem, we have done everything that we could do or that we can possible do. We have expended all the resources, the time and the effort that we could at this stage of the game and until anything else happens, we have concluded that the aircraft and its occupants are lost.”
Though the government has officially called off its search, Dynamic Aviation and U308 Corp. have received permission to continue searching for the plane. According to a release on the U308 Corp Website, they have taken thousand of aerial photos looking down on the jungle canopy, and they are still in the process of analyzing them. The mining company also indicated that they are helping to continue small ground searches as well as following up on leads from people who claim to have seen the plane on November 1st.
Paris is a 2008 graduate of Middle Tennessee State University. He is currently engaged Dara Hall, a current MTSU student who will graduate in December.
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