The Tacoma pilot and plane that disappeared 36 days ago have been found, officials say

The crash site and body of Tacoma pilot Rodney Collen was found Monday, 36 days after he went missing from Tacoma Narrows Airport, according to the state Department of Transportation.

WSDOT’s Air Search and Rescue crews found the missing 2006 Cessna plane in deeply wooded terrain near Queets.

“The pilot was discovered deceased inside the aircraft, likely dying upon impact,” WSDOT said in a statement. Collen’s family has been notified, the agency said.

Crews from several agencies spent two weeks searching for Collen after he flew out of the airport near Gig Harbor on March 6. The plane soon stopped transmitting its location and disappeared off radar about 45 minutes later.

The initial search occurred in a 36-square-mile area between Lake Quinault and Queets. Searching for a white plane in a snowy forests proved difficult, WSDOT said.

On Friday, aerial search crews returned to the area using a new hypothesis of what might have happened provided by a search-and-rescue partner in British Columbia, WSDOT said. Much of the snow in the area had melted by then.

Aerial search crews noticed items of interest at one site but couldn’t positively identify them. On Monday morning, a combined team from WSDOT, Quinault Emergency Management and King County Search and Rescue hiked to the site. There, they found and identified Collen’s plane.

It’s unknown why the plane crashed. The National Transportation Safety Board will conduct an investigation. Findings typically take 12-18 months to complete.

More than a dozen law enforcement, search and rescue, tribal and other agencies took part in the search.

Collen and his fiance, Shannon Garrett, are owners of Mushroom House on the Key Peninsula and were featured in The News Tribune last summer. Collen owned a digital music storage service.