Aircraft N7062N Data

After logging three weeks and hundreds of hours in the air, Canadian search officials have ended their efforts to find an American couple whose plane is missing around the Alaska-Yukon border.

Military search officials say the likelihood of finding pilot Gary Patigler and his wife, Ingrid, alive is too slim to warrant further effort and expenditure.

The couple, who had been camping and sightseeing around the North, have been missing since June 20, when they departed from an airfield near Anchorage, Alaska, on their Beechcraft Bonanza aircraft.

They never arrived in Whitehorse as planned, prompting searches on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border.

At the height of the Canadian search, 90 people, five military aircraft and five civilian planes logged about 400 hours in the air, scouring an area spanning 21,000 square kilometres between Whitehorse and the border.

"We covered a lot of the areas two or three times, high probability areas," said Capt. Bob Evans of the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Victoria.

"It has been, you know, quite a time since the aircraft went missing, so you have to factor that into account as well," Evans, one of the people who co-ordinated the search, told CBC News Friday.

The Canadian search was scaled back last week, with a 10-person crew and a Buffalo aircraft remaining in Whitehorse to fly daily missions.

Evans said their search files and maps of the area have now been turned over to the RCMP, which will treat the case as a missing person's file.

Anyone with information about the missing plane should contact their nearest police department, he said.

Gone missing Wolf Lake (Wasilla AK) to Whitehorse,YT