VENTURA : Family Holds Hope for Missing Pilot

Family and friends of a Ventura pilot who disappeared while flying over the Pacific Ocean two weeks ago said Thursday they haven’t given up hope that he may be found alive.

David B. Briggs took off from Pohnpei, a tiny island north of New Guinea, at 7:10 a.m. April 18 for what should have been a six-hour trip to a another island, friends said.

He was en route to Camarillo, where he was scheduled to deliver the two-seat Cessna 402 he was flying to Southern Cross Aviation, said Barbara Anderson, manager of the Camarillo plane-delivery service.

Briggs asked for clearance to increase his altitude about 10 minutes into the flight and received permission, Anderson said. But he never acknowledged it and has not been heard from since, she said.

The U.S. Coast Guard and the Air Force searched the ocean under Briggs’ flight path for three days without finding any trace of him or the aircraft, Anderson said. Briggs, 51, has delivered planes for Southern Cross for about seven years and has logged hundreds of trips worldwide, she said.

Briggs’ girlfriend, 42-year-old Melody Leonard of Ventura, said he expressed concern about the condition of the 16-year-old plane days before he took off.

“They were repairing it, it was a used plane,” Leonard said. “He used the term beast in describing it. I think he was worried.”

Briggs’ sister, Ventura resident Lynda Irvine, said she still holds out hope that her older brother is alive. He has another sister, Laurie, who lives in Colorado, and two adult children who live in Bakersfield, Irvine said.

“He always told me: ‘Don’t feel bad if anything happens to me because I love flying and I’d rather go that way than anyway else.’ ”