No survivors after plane carrying Albertans found crashed in Utah

Friday’s search for a small plane carrying four Albertans ended tragically after crews located its wreckage in Utah.

The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed the airplane — carrying Lethbridge-area men Bill Kaupp, his son Clint and two of their friends — was found crashed in a remote area near Monticello, Utah, on Friday evening, about 380 kilometres southeast of Salt Lake City, near the Colorado border.

“It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that the plane has been located with no survivors,” read a message posted Friday night on the Kaupp Family Farms Facebook page.

“I want to tell everyone how much I appreciate the sharing, good wishes and all the condolences given over today. There’s still a lot of good in this very scary world. In the future I will talk about how great the four people that we lost were to everyone that knew them, but for now we are going to grieve.”

The single-engine Piper Lance aircraft left Cutbank, Mont., on Wednesday, on the way to Albuquerque, N.M., where Bill Kaupp was to look at another aircraft to possibly purchase.

Due to bad weather, they landed their aircraft at Grand Junction, Colo., where they spent Wednesday night, said Bill Kaupp’s daughter, Jaime Metzger.

They left on the final three-hour leg of their flight to Albuquerque on Thursday morning, she said.

“The weather looked good, just a few clouds, that was it — we had no concerns,” said Metzger.

On Friday afternoon, the family posted on their Facebook page that an emergency beacon believed to be transmitting from the plane had been detected near Dove Creek, Colo., near the border with New Mexico.

Air rescuers couldn’t approach the site due to a snow storm, but ground crews were headed toward it, they said.

A Snapchat photo posted by Clint Kaupp shortly after takeoff, and some radio transmissions about the aircraft’s flight path, were the last communications from those on board the Piper, said Metzger.

Kaupp had been flying off and on for the past 30 years and was an extremely careful aviator, his daughter said.

Kaupp even preferred not to fly over mountains and had indicated by radio that he was veering away from them, said his daughter.

The two Kaupp men have helped operate a grain farm in New Dayton, south of Lethbridge, that’s been in their family for five generations.