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Voice on control tower audio tape: "Lebanon Tower ...." The voice is that of Patrick Hayes from Clinton. The 30-year-old Captain of a two-pilot Lear jet. At the controls is his partner, 31-year-old Johan Schwartz from Westport. Their destination: Lebanon, New Hampshire, a remote airport tucked in the shadows of the New Hampshire and Vermont mountains. It was a rainy Christmas Eve in 1996. Soupy clouds clinging to the hillsides, filling up every crevice and shrouding the peaks. Hayes contacted the air traffic control tower. Patrick Hayes (on radio): "Ah, tower, Lear 3-0-8-Lima-Sierra, We're BURGR inbound; we're not getting the localizer." The localizer is a radio signal pilots must locate in order to line up with the runway properly. When Hayes and Schwartz couldn't find that signal, the pilots told the crew here in the tower they'd circle around and try again. It's called a missed approach. Patrick Hayes (on radio): "We're going to execute the missed here, ah, ah, we're not receiving any localizer." They circled two more times. 17 minutes later and about seven miles from this ground beacon they disappeared from the tower's radar screens. Engineers have put together countless charts based on the Learjet's radar track. Educated guesses put it within 30 miles of this airport. Problem is, within that 30 mile radius, there are more than 150 mountains. The plane could have crashed into any one of them.
Jay Hayes, Missing Pilot's Brother: "It was blowing. It was raining. It was pretty noisy around here at the time.
Two and a half years later Patrick Hayes' brother Jay is still searching. Jay Hayes: "It really changed my life profoundly. I would have never thought I would have been doing something like this with my life." Hayes has flown over this region many times before. But this is his first air search with this kind of equipment. Chopper 8 LIVE has four cameras, one gyrostabilized, which keeps the picture stable even as the helicopter shakes. The lens is so powerful it can zero in on a tiny rock more than a thousand feet below. Jay Hayes: "People down home don't realize why we can't find it, because it's just so vast here." We spent several hours sweeping the mountains. Every time we saw something suspicious we took a close look. "What's that right there? That spot right there." Underneath the lush green trees glimpses of white can be deceiving. "Boy that looks real interesting, that piece." This area had us so intrigued we hiked about a half mile through woods, over leaves and mud only to find some odd shaped rocks partially covered with moss scattered through a clearing. Jay Hayes: "Sometimes I talk to Patrick, you know, in my conscience, and it's like, 'Where are you anyway? Why are you doing this, you know?'" Hayes has followed a lot of leads - some false, some promising, like the testimony of native Warren Stickney. Warren Stickney, Warren, NH: "I heard a jet coming in from the North." Stickney, who lives nearly 40 miles from the airport, remembers standing on his deck that morning smoking a cigarette. Stickney: "And then there was a tremendous impact, and everything ceased. You know, the noise of the jet and all just came to an abrupt stop." The next morning - same place, same time - Stickney says he smelled fuel. Stickney: "Like I'm standing in a pool of oil." From the chopper we searched around Stickney's home. Again nothing. And so the mystery of Patrick Hayes, Johan Schwartz, and their Learjet remains just that: a mystery. Jay Hayes swears these mountains are hiding the secret somewhere in their vast and varied landscape. He also swears that someday he'll get to it. Jay Hayes: "If I were in this situation, and I was in Patrick's seat and this happened to me, I think I'd want to be found. I think Patrick would too." Jay Hayes is also maintaining a website dedicated to finding his brother and Schwartz. It is located at www.ctol.net/~jay/learjet/main.html ©1999 WTNH/WTNH-DT |
Brother continues search for plane piloted by brother and friend