Volunteers Search for 3 Who Disappeared in Plane

The search is continuing for three people who took off in a small plane from Van Nuys Airport on a rainy night and have been missing for five days, authorities said Tuesday.

Civil Air Patrol volunteers have been searching 2,400 square miles near Bishop for the four-seater Beechcraft piloted by Pasadena doctor Eric Kim. Kim, along with his two passengers, Mauro Wolinski and Kathryn Muller, left Thursday on a flight to Mammoth Lakes, said CAP Major Wyn Selwyn

Kim, an anesthesiologist at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, and Wolinski, a gastroenterologist at St. Mary’s Hospital in Long Beach, left Torrance Airport and made a brief stop at Van Nuys at 5 p.m. to pick up Muller, who works for a company that finances auto loans. The trio headed north despite a growing storm, Selwyn said.

“They were talking on the radio to people on the ground near Edwards,” Selwyn said, referring to the Air Force base on the Los Angeles-Kern county line. As the plane flew above Owens Lake at 7:40 p.m., the Federal Aviation Administration radar lost track of it, Selwyn said, adding that the pilot had not filed a flight plan. There is also no record, he said, of Kim requesting a weather briefing from the FAA.

“They told them we lost radar contact, and they answered, ‘OK, fine, we will just continue on,’ ” he said.

The last recorded sighting was Thursday at 7:48 p.m. three miles southwest of Bishop, as the craft flew at 10,400 feet, Selwyn said.

“It was snowing in the area where the contact was lost,” he said.

The three people on the plane failed to show for dinner that night in Mammoth with friends. Their families also received no calls to say they had arrived. On Friday, authorities were notified and a search began Saturday morning, Selwyn said.

“To have your daughter up there . . . I can’t even describe it,” said John Muller, father of Kathryn Muller, late Tuesday night.

“What ever possessed that doctor to fly up there in that kind of weather,” Muller said. “That’s what gets me.

“They shouldn’t have been flying at all,” he said.

So far, the Civil Air Patrol dispatched 73 planes, which have flown 267 sorties in the search. About 200 volunteers have participated. The search will resume at 7 a.m. today, Selwyn said.