-No word of pilot
A SINGLE-engine Piper 228 Cherokee airplane, piloted by its owner, Bernard Singh, and reported missing since Friday, was found late yesterday in the vicinity of Chi-Chi West.

The plane owned by pilot Bernard Singh.

There was no mention however of whether the pilot was found and what state he was in.

Both pilot and plane were last seen during take-off on Friday afternoon, but when they failed to arrive at Kaikan, where they were headed, several other pilots got together and mounted a search for their missing colleague.

Singh, 37, of Strathspey, East Coast Demerara, reportedly has a mining concession in the Pakaraima Mountains area in Region Seven (Cuyuni/Mazaruni), and was alone on the flight, which originated at the said Chi-Chi west where the plane was found.

Seems, however, that this going missing is becoming a habit of his, as it was only in April that he was reported to have disappeared in the vicinity of the said Chi-Chi area, but fortunately found his way back to his mining camp a few days later.

According to the Police, Singh had left the Ogle Airport here in the city on April 7, 2009 in his aircraft for Chi-Chi, where his mining concession is located. Three days later (April 10), he left camp, purportedly to head back to the city, but was never heard from again until April 12. What was troubling at the time was that his plane was still at the airstrip at Chi-Chi, where he had left it when he flew in, before making for his mining camp.

The police said in a release that on that occasion, a Joint Services team was just about to go into the area to conduct a search and investigation, when they learnt that Singh had made his way back to his camp and was alive and well.

The last plane to have gone missing over Guyana’s mountainous jungle was the one carrying a Markham-based geophysics technician and two American geologists, and that was in November last year.

Patrick Murphy, who was conducting a geophysical survey on a twin-engine Beechcraft King N874 airplane, took off from the city at 2:15pm on November 4, 2008, and the last that was heard of it was at 3pm the following day, by way of a relayed message back to air traffic control.

There was no indication, no emergency beacons. The plane was due back at about 6:30pm the same day, but it never returned; it just disappeared.

The search, launched by the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority, began the next day and continued several days.