Elderly Aviators Missing In Colo.

It wasn't unusual for Claiborne Courtright, 81, and William Duffy, 77, to take off in one of their small planes and spend hours meandering across Colorado, stopping whenever they felt like it, have a cup of coffee or talk to locals.

"They were just having fun, just out for an afternoon stroll," Courtright's wife, Anne, said. "They may be gone for quite a while, but they usually wouldn't go real far."

The pair from Pueblo failed to return last Thursday from one such spontaneous trip along the Continental Divide, in Courtright's small plane, a 1954 red and tan Piper Tri-Pacer. They were last seen refueling in Kremmling, Colo., about 80 miles northwest of Denver.

On Wednesday, authorities searched the Hoosier Pass area west of Denver because of a radio signal believed to be from an aircraft's emergency transmitter and a report of a loud boom. But the signal turned out to be generated by a high-voltage power line, Civil Air Patrol spokesman Stephen Blucher said.

"If anybody would survive something like that, he would," Doris Duffy said of her husband, a retired insurance executive. The couple has been married for 55 years and has two grown children.

But she added: "I'm just praying that they would find the plane, whatever happened. They would give us an answer."

On the day they vanished, the men drove to Fremont County Airport in Canon City, where Courtright kept his plane. Before the trip, the retired dermatologist checked the weather on the Internet, as he always did, but did not tell his wife where the two friends planned to fly.

"They didn't know where they were going to go," Anne Courtright said. She added that her husband carried a survival kit whenever he traveled that usually contained some warm clothes, blankets, matches and probably food.

Claiborne Courtright had been a pilot since the 1950s. Flying was a thrill for him, his wife said, because it gave him a chance to get off the road and make his own path.

Courtright's plane was not pressurized and usually could not climb above 13,000 feet, requiring the men to thread their flights through mountain passes, not over the peaks.

The Courtrights, who have been married for 56 years and have four children, had co-owned a business that offered flight training and charters, but flying had become much more relaxed in their later years.

"He's not pushed now," Anne Courtright said. "He doesn't have to go from point A to point B, so he doesn't."

Doris Duffy said her husband also was an experienced mountain pilot. She said the men went fishing and camping together, once traveling to Alaska.

"I don't worry about them until something like this happens," she said. "I can't imagine the plane going down, but I have to."

By Melissa Trujillo