Missing plane found, pilot injured but alive

Injured and disoriented, a pilot was trapped upside down in his crashed airplane for several hours Tuesday but was able to make calls on his cellphone while rescuers searched the north Mississippi woods where he went down, authorities said after finding the man alive.

Monroe County Sheriff Cecil Cantrell said the pilot, who has not been identified, was taken to a hospital for treatment after crashing his single-engine Piper Cherokee Six when the plane ran out of fuel and went down near the border of Itawamba and Monroe counties. The pilot's name and condition were not immediately available. He was the only person aboard.

"We got him out. He was living. He was shook up and cut up real bad, but he was coherent. What he's been through, it was a miracle," Cantrell said. "We don't know his name. We tried to talk to him, but he couldn't really say much." The sheriff said the man appeared to be between 40 and 50 years old.

Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said the plane was about 18 miles southeast of Tupelo when the pilot reported a problem Tuesday morning. Bergen said an alert was sent to airports and authorities within a 50-mile radius of the plane's last known location at about 7:45 a.m. CST.

Bergen said she couldn't say what kind of problem the pilot reported, but local authorities said he told air traffic controllers he was running out of gas while flying from Ocala, Fla., to Olive Branch, Miss. The plane is registered to Buccaneer Aviation Inc., a Delaware corporation, but the company appears to operate in Florida.

The pilot tried to give air traffic controllers his location before going down, the sheriff said. Residents in the area also reported seeing a plane that appeared to be going down into the woods. Firefighters, law enforcement officers and others from Itawamba, Lee and Monroe counties joined in the search.

Cantrell said the pilot called someone on his cellphone and authorities used "pings" from cellular towers in the area to help narrow their search. Two Army National Guard UH-72 Lakota helicopters joined the search after overcast skies initially hampered efforts to get helicopters in the sky.

One of the helicopters spotted the wreckage about 12:40 p.m. CST, said Guard spokesman Timothy Powell.

"It was just an awesome job on everybody's part," Cantrell said. "He has to be a pretty good pilot. He went down between trees in some oak hardwoods and the wings took the impact."