Missing Cessna 150 Found, Pilot Suffers Fatal Injuries

A Cessna 150 that went missing last week on a flight from Southern Oregon to Northern California has been found, and the news was not what anyone had hoped for. The pilot, well-known Orland, California, man William "Bill" Bushling, 71, was killed in the crash when it went down in rough, wooded terrain in Siskiyou County, California.

According to a story in the Siskiyou Daily News, Bushling had contacted the Siskiyou County Sheriff's department with "a request for an emergency landing," presumably via Bushling's cell phone. Searchers used the last ping from Bushling's phone to narrow the search area, and on Friday morning was found by a local resident, who relayed the N-number of the plane to the sheriff's department.

Bushling had not filed a flight plan, but searchers early on believed that he was headed back to Orland from Ashland, Oregon. The crashed plane was indeed found along the route of flight between those two airports.