MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) — Civil Air Patrol teams were searching a mountainous and densely wooded area in southeastern West Virginia on Tuesday for a small plane reported missing more than a week ago during a flight from Texas to Virginia.

Three reconnaissance planes were in the air, while ground teams of about 30 people searched near the unincorporated community of Quinwood in Greenbrier County, said Maj. Jeffery Schrock, a spokesman for the air patrol.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Lynn Lunsford said Kwan Kwok of Virginia was reported missing by his sister, who said Kwok had recently bought the aircraft in Dalhart, Texas, to fly back to his home state.

The pilot’s family provided a photograph to the Civil Air Patrol of what it says is the missing plane, a cream-colored Piper PA-30 twin engine with teal blue and orange-red markings. The tail number in the FAA database is still registered to Craig S. Westberg of Durango, Colo. No phone listing for Craig Westberg could be found.

The Civil Air Patrol did not immediately provide an age or hometown for Kwok and said the sister is in Holland and could not immediately be contacted.

Schrock said the search began Sunday after the Civil Air Patrol received an alert from the Air Force that the plane was missing. It had left Texas Nov. 23, but Lunsford said Kwok didn’t file a flight plan.

The search area was recommended by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida, based on satellite tracking, Schrock said. The plane was equipped with an emergency locator trasmitter, but no signal has been detected.

Schrock said it was windy, cloudy and drizzling around the time Kwok disappeared. No one had contact with the pilot after he left the Texas airport, he said. Ordinarily, Schrock said, the flight should have taken four to five hours.

The search area is “very desolate,” densely forested and physically challenging, Schrock said. “I think it’s going to be hard to get in with vehicles. You might have to walk several miles once we find the aircraft.”

The Pennsylvania Civil Air Patrol, meanwhile, was sending a plane with a system that allows searchers to program a particular spectral signature — a kind of metal, for example — into an onboard computer. A camera then tries to detect and pinpoint anything on the ground that matches that signature.

The sensor can also detect objects that are significantly different from the background in which they are located.

Chuck Lofton, who works at Dalhart Municipal Airport in Texas, said he met Kwok while the pilot was checking out the plane around Nov. 21. Kwok told him he’d flown into Amarillo a day or two before and rented a car for the 83-mile drive to Dalhart.

Kwok said he was a “pretty experienced pilot” who had flown helicopters and multiengine aircraft, Lofton said.

National Video