Alan Gabriel Foster, 47, disappeared on September 10, 2013 while piloting a recently purchased blue and white Piper PA-32, tail number N3705W, on a flight from Yakutat to Anchorage. A seasoned pilot with more than 9,000 hours and experience flying commercial and medevac missions across Alaska, Foster refueled in Yakutat and departed about 3:30 p.m., telling Juneau flight service he had a contingency to land in Cordova if weather deteriorated.

About eighteen minutes into the flight radar showed a transponder target identified as his aircraft at roughly 1,100 feet, about 45 miles west of Yakutat near the Malaspina Glacier. After that contact, both Foster and the plane vanished. His mother reported him overdue the same evening.

A multiagency search by the Air Force, Coast Guard, and Civil Air Patrol used C-130s and H-60 helicopters, but poor weather and the absence of a registered emergency locator transmitter expanded the possible search area by hundreds of square miles. No wreckage, beacon signals, or other signs of the aircraft or pilot were found before the official search was suspended.

Did anyone in the Yakutat or Cordova aviation communities have recent contact with Foster or knowledge of his planned route that could help fill gaps in that eighteen-minute window?