PAHRUMP (KTNV) — A Southern Nevada aviation expert is calling for an escalation of the ongoing search for a pilot who disappeared after taking off from the North Las Vegas airport last week.
In an interview with Channel 13 on Friday, Jonathan Wallentine — who owns and operates Valley View Airport in Pahrump — said he believes the investigation needs to be broadened.
The pilot, 65-year-old Michael Martin, went missing Jan. 2. Martin's family said he disappeared during a routine flight in his plane, a Piper Cherokee Six PA-32-300.
His family also tells Channel 13 Martin is an experienced pilot — something echoed by Wallentine in our conversations with him on Friday.
"Based on his track record, he's a good pilot. He's a very good pilot," Wallentine said. "You can see from his track record of flying..."
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When Wallentine heard Martin had gone missing, he started combing through the pilot's flight records for more information.
Martin, an engineer who works in Las Vegas, would often take a short flight on his lunch break to clear his head, his family says. But this time, he never returned.
According to Martin's family, his normal lunchtime flight was a simple loop around Mt. Charleston. But data shows his plane's transponder stopped transmitting at 10,000 feet near Jefferson Peak, just north of Tonopah.
Wallentine says the details of this case so far just don't add up.
"There's a couple different scenarios," Wallentine said. "One was, he's frustrated, he goes off the grid."
Martin's family disputes that possibility, pointing out that Martin didn't take any extra cash with him, his credit cards haven't been swiped anywhere — he didn't even take his contact lenses.
Another possibility — that Martin's plane crashed — is also unlikely, Wallentine said.
"If the ELT — which is the emergency transponder — had gone off, it would have been picked up, in my professional opinion," Wallentine said. "So I don't think the plane has crashed."
Wallentine says he even sent out one of his pilots to search for any sign of Martin's plane — and found nothing. That doesn't mean Martin couldn't have landed at a private airport — or even somewhere in the Nevada wilderness, he said.
The bizarre circumstances of Martin's disappearance should be taken more seriously, Wallentine argues.
"I mean, it's the 10th [of January]. He departed on the 2nd. That's a long time," he said.
"Since it's gone on this long and the Civil Air Patrol and people have been searching for the crash, well there's no indication of a crash, whatsoever," Wallentine added.
"The hypothesis that he went on some sabbatical, which according to the family doesn't seem at all likely...he did his regular flight around the Charleston mountain that he just didn't return from."
Martin was last seen wearing khakis, a blue button-down shirt and a black fleece vest. His family tells us he wore his hair in a ponytail.
Anyone with information about Martin's whereabouts is asked to call the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department at 702-828-3111.
