SAR Mel Melissen BN Islander C-GIPF September 1983

[canuck10]

SAR Mel Melissen Sep 1983 Central Mountain Air BN Islander C-GIPF

In Sep 1983 my friend Mel Melissen disappeared on a flight between Campbell River
and Smithers, BC;
on board were six multi-millionaire fishermen/hunters from Germany and the U.S.

Though we searched for aircraft and passengers for five weeks, no trace was ever found;
Today, 30 years later, they are still listed missing.

I have written a long, detailed article about SAR Melissen but require some photos for it.

Anybody remember Mel and/or has photographs of Islander 'GIPL?

Thanks,

Dirk Septer

[cncpc]

SAR Mel Melissen Sep 1983 Central Mountain Air BN Islander C-GIPF

In Sep 1983 my friend Mel Melissen disappeared on a flight between Campbell River
and Smithers, BC;
on board were six multi-millionaire fishermen/hunters from Germany and the U.S.

Though we searched for aircraft and passengers for five weeks, no trace was ever found;
Today, 30 years later, they are still listed missing.

I have written a long, detailed article about SAR Melissen but require some photos for it.

Anybody remember Mel and/or has photographs of Islander 'GIPL?

Thanks,

Dirk Septer

I do remember it fairly well. He ran what already was, or became, Central Mountain Air in Smithers and was coming back from the Lower Mainland to Smithers. I think the general story was that the airplane was last seen north bound at the head of Knight Inlet.

I moved from Prince George to Campbell River in early 1984 and I remember that searching was still continuing then, funded I think by the families, some of whom needed death certificates to collect insurance, as well as closure.

From what I remember, it was a flight that had an elevated risk factor attached to it. There was never a radar hit, and the search was over a vast area, with two different possible routes involved. The aircraft could have went in near Knight, or it could have made it almost all the way to Smithers.

I was CP at an outfit in PG when it happened, but I never met him.

[Tramp]

Dirk,
A google search turned this up. You likely already have it...but just in case you don't.
Good luck!

[xsbank]

I was a witness at that court case. They never found a rivet from old IPF yet they found for pilot error and as far as I recall the widow got exactly none of her husband's estate.

It was a frustrating and totally humiliating experience. Here is Xsbank's Number One Rule for living happily ever after: NEVER appear as a witness for any reason unless they are prepared to pay you at least as much as I charge which is $10,000 per day plus taxes plus $2000 per day expenses.

A total gong show and in my opinion, a miscarriage of justice. The lawyer for the plaintiffs, the little prick, made millions and Mel's widow got screwed.

That whole horrible affair was when I learned to say no if the weather or anything else I didn't like was just not good enough. It's a good lesson to learn, Mel was found culpable with no evidence except weather reports and his estate was looted. Put that in your pipe for your next decision-making matrix.

Poor old IPF went in an out of Scar Creek (sometimes with me driving her) for Tradewinds (thanks for the photo!) and round river rocks would rise out of the air strip gravel, get picked up by the mains and hammered the leading edge of the tailplane flat. Tradewinds went T/U in 1980, stiffed me for my last paycheque and I never flew her again. Then she vanished 3 years or so later. The little BN sticky from the centre of the column rattled off into my lap one day and I still have it in my log book.

I blame IPF for my lovely digital hearing aids today.

Moh Creek, Owikeno...we used to land on the south side of 08 on 12 at YVR so we wouldn't have to hold short coz she was so slow on final you could put her on the numbers, stop and still see white under you. It would take 2 days to taxi in.

Am I bitter? Hardly at all.

[JBI]

I was a witness at that court case. They never found a rivet from old IPF yet they found for pilot error and as far as I recall the widow got exactly none of her husband's estate.

It was a frustrating and totally humiliating experience. Here is Xsbank's Number One Rule for living happily ever after: NEVER appear as a witness for any reason unless they are prepared to pay you at least as much as I charge which is $10,000 per day plus taxes plus $2000 per day expenses.

A total gong show and in my opinion, a miscarriage of justice. The lawyer for the plaintiffs, the little prick, made millions and Mel's widow got screwed.

That whole horrible affair was when I learned to say no if the weather or anything else I didn't like was just not good enough. It's a good lesson to learn, Mel was found culpable with no evidence except weather reports and his estate was looted. Put that in your pipe for your next decision-making matrix.

...

Am I bitter? Hardly at all.

Sorry to hear that you lost a friend and that being a witness was an unpleasant experience.

How would the pilot's widow have gotten screwed other than by losing her husband? The carrier's liability insurance will generally cover any losses suffered by passengers in an accident even if the pilot is found negligent.

Fees for fact witnesses are regulated by the court and a witness is required to attend if subpoenaed. Acting as an expert witness is a different story.

[Rowdy]

I've seen a picture of two of that ol' islander somewhere before. Let me see what I can hunt down..

[canuck10]

During one of the first days of the search, I was in the port side spotter seat of Buffalo SAR 456 when I saw bear paw prints high on a glacier in the Mount Waddington area (looked to me as having been made by the kind of bear paw snow shoes a pilot would have inside his aircraft. As SAR 456 had continue on her assigned search block, an Armed Forces Labrador was called in to follow those tracks.

The tracks, later turned out to have been made by a grizzly bear, which spooked by the chopper turned around and back tracked its own trail.
That grizzly had no real reason to be that high up in the mountains at that time of the year.

The following days and weeks, the weather crapped out and no further visual aerial search was made in that area. The light coloured aircraft wreckage would probably have been covered in fresh snow and hard to spot anyway.

It always bugged me that no follow up was made on these observed unusual tacks way up that glacier. Did that grizzly smell something, the same object we we were searching for? Unfortunately we will never know.

Several years ago, with snow an ice melting and a down slope movement of an object like a plane wreck, I contacted 442 Comox Search Sqn.,
asking for the flight records for SAR 456 and that Labrador for the day we saw those tracks. Having the lat. and long. (especially so close to Comox) on training flights or general over flights, maybe some extra attention might have been given to this location in the hope of finally finding the wreckage and bring closure for the families of the seven still missing men.

Their unexpected response: those records have long since been destroyed and disposed of!

[cncpc]

I was a witness at that court case. They never found a rivet from old IPF yet they found for pilot error and as far as I recall the widow got exactly none of her husband's estate.

It was a frustrating and totally humiliating experience. Here is Xsbank's Number One Rule for living happily ever after: NEVER appear as a witness for any reason unless they are prepared to pay you at least as much as I charge which is $10,000 per day plus taxes plus $2000 per day expenses.

A total gong show and in my opinion, a miscarriage of justice. The lawyer for the plaintiffs, the little prick, made millions and Mel's widow got screwed.

That whole horrible affair was when I learned to say no if the weather or anything else I didn't like was just not good enough. It's a good lesson to learn, Mel was found culpable with no evidence except weather reports and his estate was looted. Put that in your pipe for your next decision-making matrix.

Poor old IPF went in an out of Scar Creek (sometimes with me driving her) for Tradewinds (thanks for the photo!) and round river rocks would rise out of the air strip gravel, get picked up by the mains and hammered the leading edge of the tailplane flat. Tradewinds went T/U in 1980, stiffed me for my last paycheque and I never flew her again. Then she vanished 3 years or so later. The little BN sticky from the centre of the column rattled off into my lap one day and I still have it in my log book.

I blame IPF for my lovely digital hearing aids today.

Moh Creek, Owikeno...we used to land on the south side of 08 on 12 at YVR so we wouldn't have to hold short coz she was so slow on final you could put her on the numbers, stop and still see white under you. It would take 2 days to taxi in.

Am I bitter? Hardly at all.

That was a great post. I don't know how they could have found pilot error without any witnesses, any aircraft, or any bodies.;

[pdw]

Those days pilot error was a fairly new description. There was a mindset that in every accident it had to be the case.

It was the TSB who figured out the need to be looking more at what a pilot was facing to be able to understand what went wrong, and not necessarily so quick with that "pilot error". Sometimes it was so obvious and often it was eventually found as such, yet also by way of the very thoughtful investigation (no blame attitude) the more difficult decisions faced are now shown to us in a final report and explained. And definitely not pilot error all the time, ever.

Some interesting information is being presented on this thread ... or in a new way. So I spent a little time getting a snapshot of the weather for that afternoon on Sept 2 /83 (no exact date/time yet available to me) and can see the Islander would have been clipping at a fairly descent ground-speed (if that was late afternoon) while gaining altitude over the inlet and beyond in a very warm low sector air.

At "the head of knights inlet" a good seasoned pilot then would have decided which route was better; so if for instance the Mt Wad direction was chosen, one decisive factor would be the direction of the flow in that warm sector. Which side of the range for a south/southeast flow ? for south/southwest ?

[chriswh86]

Hi all!

I dont mean to step on anyones toes in this post, I hope I am not. This is the only place ive found talk of a Britten Norman Islander and Mount Waddington.

I recently came across this,
http://aviation-safety.net/database/rec ... 19871204-0

Another? BN islander that went down, apparently lost in/around Mount Waddington as well. 2 different plane registration numbers, different amount of passengers, different destinations, both near the end of the year, in the 80's.

I just noticed, oops during this post, I live near the mount waddington regional district but not the actual mount waddington which is on the main land. Either way, same mountain, same type of plane?

Anyone care to share there thoughts?

Chris,

[pdw]

Both flights were "domestic scheduled passenger" and are each suspected lost in the Mt Waddington area; 4 years & 3months between the two occurrances ... were navigating on opposite direction flightpaths (similar routing) to/from Campbell River.

Setting up a comparison of flight plan altitude / route and time may be useful to identify a common weather hazzard out of the available WX-history (similarly adverse effects that can cause controll-loss may be hidden in records for both accidents).

At the moment not much flight-plan detail seems to be available for either.

[i8aapple]

Sometimes questions aren’t answered, but at least one knows the fate of the souls on board Central Martin Air has not changed since 1983. One of the passengers was George Cogar, whose invention ended the use of Hollerith Card (AKA: IBM or punch cards). These cards were old enough to have been used to compile The 1890 US census. Mr. Cogar introduced magnetic tape input which eventually replaced stacks of loose cards and greatly improved the speed and accuracy of the next generation of mainframes.
Today no person or government agency can assume or guess the cause of any type of aviation incident without evidence. My very late condolences for your loss as well as the those shared by the families and friends of the men who remain missing. I remember hearing the sad news and always hoped something would be found to help with much needed closure – especially for George Cogar’s daughter Casandra, who I took to our Class of 1971 Senior Prom in Herkimer New York.

Kevin

Related information is available in Wikipedia under “George Cogar,” “Hollerith” and “List of People Who Disappeared...”

[Capt. Underpants]

Sometimes questions aren’t answered, but at least one knows the fate of the souls on board Central Martin Air has not changed since 1983. One of the passengers was George Cogar, whose invention ended the use of Hollerith Card (AKA: IBM or punch cards). These cards were old enough to have been used to compile The 1890 US census. Mr. Cogar introduced magnetic tape input which eventually replaced stacks of loose cards and greatly improved the speed and accuracy of the next generation of mainframes.
Today no person or government agency can assume or guess the cause of any type of aviation incident without evidence. My very late condolences for your loss as well as the those shared by the families and friends of the men who remain missing. I remember hearing the sad news and always hoped something would be found to help with much needed closure – especially for George Cogar’s daughter Casandra, who I took to our Class of 1971 Senior Prom in Herkimer New York.

Kevin

Related information is available in Wikipedia under “George Cogar,” “Hollerith” and “List of People Who Disappeared...”

This is a great thread.

I would have liked the chance to shake Mr. Cogar's hand with a hearty "thank you", both for his invention and for waiting until 1983 to come up with it. I hated using punch cards and my brief stint in a university computer science program included a lot of wasted time messing with them. They were a small part of the reason I decided to pull the plug and head for the skies.

[Lillious]

On this somber anniversary I am here to say our family will forever remember Mel as well as all of the gentlemen on the plane. I am the middle daughter of George Cogar. My husband Tim was on the search every day, often with Keith Connors.
Those were unbearable days and nights for all of the families involved. I thank the gentleman who wanted to shake my dad's hand. Dad's inventions were many and continue to benefit the tech world even today. Let me add that my mother never gave up hope that she would be reunited with her husband. She continued to speak with individuals who searched relentlessly for the plane. 12 years after today's anniversary my mother lost her battle with colon cancer. That's what the doctors called it but we know she died of a broken heart.
My parents met on a bus in West Virginia. My dad was tired of walking and when he flagged down the bus and stepped onboard he saw my mother and it was indeed love at first site. They wrote letters for 6 months-he was in the service at the time-and a few days after meeting again they were married.
My dad was a quantified genius and believe me they are not easy to live with! His interests were vast as were his abilities.
As a child I would watch him constantly be writing and reading. Even if we were out to dinner he would start drawing his ideas on a paper napkin.
Dad always told my mom that if he ever went missing on a hunting/fishing trip to British Columbia he would have to walk out because it would be impossible to find him with the type of terrain there. So she waited for him.
I cannot speak of the trial as I was not there. But my mother went every day and wore the same outfit-she would wash it out in the hotel bathroom. Her heart ached for Mel's family as it did for the families of the friends and my dad's brother that were on that plane.
As a young mother with 2 babies at home in New York State I was faced with the fear that my husband might not come back home either. But he was resolute in his commitment to search for my dad, a man my husband greatly admired, and my mom whom my husband truly adored.
Those were horrible days for any and all involved. Many friends from here went to BC to fly on the search. I could go on and on about those days but even today they are painful memories and difficult to bring up.
Today is the anniversary of that horrible phone call. For the many friends and family that continue to wish for a different ending, as we do, I send my heartfelt thoughts to all of them who may read this. Tomorrow we bury my husbands mom who lived to 93 and spent the last months of her life in near isolation due to Covid. This life provides both anguish and joy. Here we try to choose joy as often as we can for anguish is thrust upon us in a nano second.
To all here I say may today be filled with all the joy your heart can hold. Cheryllyn Cogar Tallman

[cncpc]

I was a witness at that court case. They never found a rivet from old IPF yet they found for pilot error and as far as I recall the widow got exactly none of her husband's estate.

It was a frustrating and totally humiliating experience. Here is Xsbank's Number One Rule for living happily ever after: NEVER appear as a witness for any reason unless they are prepared to pay you at least as much as I charge which is $10,000 per day plus taxes plus $2000 per day expenses.

A total gong show and in my opinion, a miscarriage of justice. The lawyer for the plaintiffs, the little prick, made millions and Mel's widow got screwed.

That whole horrible affair was when I learned to say no if the weather or anything else I didn't like was just not good enough. It's a good lesson to learn, Mel was found culpable with no evidence except weather reports and his estate was looted. Put that in your pipe for your next decision-making matrix.

Poor old IPF went in an out of Scar Creek (sometimes with me driving her) for Tradewinds (thanks for the photo!) and round river rocks would rise out of the air strip gravel, get picked up by the mains and hammered the leading edge of the tailplane flat. Tradewinds went T/U in 1980, stiffed me for my last paycheque and I never flew her again. Then she vanished 3 years or so later. The little BN sticky from the centre of the column rattled off into my lap one day and I still have it in my log book.

I blame IPF for my lovely digital hearing aids today.

Moh Creek, Owikeno...we used to land on the south side of 08 on 12 at YVR so we wouldn't have to hold short coz she was so slow on final you could put her on the numbers, stop and still see white under you. It would take 2 days to taxi in.

Am I bitter? Hardly at all.

That's a very good post.

[SARpilot]

During one of the first days of the search, I was in the port side spotter seat of Buffalo SAR 456 when I saw bear paw prints high on a glacier in the Mount Waddington area (looked to me as having been made by the kind of bear paw snow shoes a pilot would have inside his aircraft. As SAR 456 had continue on her assigned search block, an Armed Forces Labrador was called in to follow those tracks.

The tracks, later turned out to have been made by a grizzly bear, which spooked by the chopper turned around and back tracked its own trail.
That grizzly had no real reason to be that high up in the mountains at that time of the year.

The following days and weeks, the weather crapped out and no further visual aerial search was made in that area. The light coloured aircraft wreckage would probably have been covered in fresh snow and hard to spot anyway.

It always bugged me that no follow up was made on these observed unusual tacks way up that glacier. Did that grizzly smell something, the same object we we were searching for? Unfortunately we will never know.

Several years ago, with snow an ice melting and a down slope movement of an object like a plane wreck, I contacted 442 Comox Search Sqn.,
asking for the flight records for SAR 456 and that Labrador for the day we saw those tracks. Having the lat. and long. (especially so close to Comox) on training flights or general over flights, maybe some extra attention might have been given to this location in the hope of finally finding the wreckage and bring closure for the families of the seven still missing men.

Their unexpected response: those records have long since been destroyed and disposed of!

Hello,
I was the Captain of Buffalo SAR 456. I and my crew flew for 15 days on SAR Melissen and logged over 121 hours. I never knew until reading these posts that the aircraft was never found. As SAR pilots once we are taken off of a search or start a new search somewhere we never find out what the final outcome was unless we happen to research it ourselves. I just retired from flying and my retirement project is to find out what the final outcomes were in the searches I was personally involved in.

To do this I have to search the archives and find out what I can from government documents. The records you are talking about used to be held at 442 Squadron and the Rescue Coordination Centre in Victoria but have been moved to the archives in Ottawa. I have put in a request to see those documents but have been told that due to their sensitivity they must first be reviewed before being released to me. I am making this request for a review and will wait for their reply.

Once they determine which documents I can see they will gather them together and I will have to physically examine them at the archives in Ottawa as none of this information is on computer or microfiche. I have asked for other searches besides Melissen but I will let you know what I find once I’ve examined the documents.

[rstanprice]

I flew with Mel when working for Skeena Air Guides in the early '70s. I have always wondered whether his plane was ever found and am sorry it has not yet. Do hope it is.

Regards, Stan Price

[Mel2]

During one of the first days of the search, I was in the port side spotter seat of Buffalo SAR 456 when I saw bear paw prints high on a glacier in the Mount Waddington area (looked to me as having been made by the kind of bear paw snow shoes a pilot would have inside his aircraft. As SAR 456 had continue on her assigned search block, an Armed Forces Labrador was called in to follow those tracks.

The tracks, later turned out to have been made by a grizzly bear, which spooked by the chopper turned around and back tracked its own trail.
That grizzly had no real reason to be that high up in the mountains at that time of the year.

The following days and weeks, the weather crapped out and no further visual aerial search was made in that area. The light coloured aircraft wreckage would probably have been covered in fresh snow and hard to spot anyway.

It always bugged me that no follow up was made on these observed unusual tacks way up that glacier. Did that grizzly smell something, the same object we we were searching for? Unfortunately we will never know.

Several years ago, with snow an ice melting and a down slope movement of an object like a plane wreck, I contacted 442 Comox Search Sqn.,
asking for the flight records for SAR 456 and that Labrador for the day we saw those tracks. Having the lat. and long. (especially so close to Comox) on training flights or general over flights, maybe some extra attention might have been given to this location in the hope of finally finding the wreckage and bring closure for the families of the seven still missing men.

Their unexpected response: those records have long since been destroyed and disposed of!

Hello, as the granddaughter of Mel, it means a lot to my family that people are still looking for/ and remembering him. Thank you for still thinking of him.