Pilot Believed to Be Lost Is Just Visiting Arizona

A 68-year-old Granada Hills pilot, whose disappearance from Whiteman Airport Monday touched off a massive Civil Air Patrol search, was located safe in Arizona, Los Angeles police said Wednesday.

Police said Robert Bell had apparently flown to Phoenix to visit friends for a few days without telling his wife and family. He did not realize that 14 planes were searching for him in California until he called Deer Valley Airport near Phoenix, Tuesday evening.

“He called in for a weather report and he was advised of the concern back here,” said Detective Jim Lewis of the Los Angeles Police Department’s missing persons unit. “It looks like it was a miscommunication with the family. He is alive and well. He contacted his family and said ‘I thought I told you’ and they said, ‘No, you didn’t.’ ”

Bell, a retired carpenter, could not be reached for comment.

Police said Bell drove to Whiteman on Monday after telling family members he was going to look at a plane. When he failed to return home, police were called and discovered his plane, a single-engine Grumman, was missing.

Investigators believed that Bell might have taken off on an impromptu pleasure ride over the Mojave Desert, as he had done on previous occasions. The Civil Air Patrol was notified and on Tuesday 14 planes combed 740 square miles of the desert in search of Bell.

“It was a massive search,” Lewis said. “A lot of these people are civilians. They stop whatever they are doing and start looking. It kind of grinds on you” that the search was launched because of a miscommunication,” he said. “But we are happy there was no crash.”

Lewis said the Civil Air Patrol notified Deer Valley Airport to watch for Bell because he had flown there previously to visit friends. The missing pilot’s plane was seen at the airport late Tuesday night.

Ellie Brekke, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said Bell was not required to file a flight plan and the agency would not investigate the matter.