Cessna 402C N2652B

 At 9:15 a.m. on May 27, 1987, 56 year old Richard Roy Yerex departed
Palm Beach International Airport, West Palm Beach, Florida, in a
 twin engine Cessna 402C, N2652B, en route for Marsh Harbour,
 Great Abaco Island, Bahamas. Although the pilot failed to file a
 Flight Plan, radar tracked the plane and confirmed that it headed
  toward Marsh Harbour.

         A routine report from N2652B, picked up by another pilot,
           placed the plane over Grand Bahama Island. Everything
           appeared to be fine. On schedule Marsh Harbour airport
             noted a twin engine aircraft fly over the airport at normal
             cruising altitude. However, as nothing lies east of Great
             Abaco except the open Atlantic, the plane was
             heading on a suicide course. The pilot made no
         attempts to contact the airport below and affirm his
       position, transmit he was lost, or give any alternate flight updates.

     If this was the aircraft, Yerex more or less failed to notice one of the
largest Bahamian islands below and flew into the Atlantic Ocean. This also
meant that he failed to transmit any SOS when it became obvious that he
was lost, for none was ever received. Of course, we must always bear in mind that one was attempted but never received.

     Richard Yerex was highly qualified. He had 16,740 hours flight time, qualified in Commercial, ATP, SE Land, ME Land, SE Sea. His family had a long connection with transportation and the Henry Ford Trade School in Detroit, Michigan, where his father Roy was the chemistry instructor and his uncle Gordon Alexander was the administrator.

     There seems to be a remarkable similarity in this loss to George Hotelling's loss in 1978. In that case, the reader will recall, Hotelling's plane seemed to be in trouble but he ignored or couldn't see help nearby and headed straight out to sea without a peep over the radio.

     If the twin engine aircraft seen at Marsh Harbour was the plane in question (and none else were reported missing), Yerex must simply be assumed
to have flown over several large islands without noticing or caring— something
that seems beyond the margin of human error in a pilot that possessed a
staggering 16,740 total flight hours, most of these in multi-engine aircraft.