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Pilot Who Crashed In Mountains Didn't Make Distress Call

DENVER (AP) -- An Iowa man who was piloting a small plane over the Colorado mountains apparently didn't make a distress call before the plane crashed, killing him and a passenger.

The last transmission that air traffic controllers received from the plane before the crash was the pilot confirming instructions to descend to 17,000 feet, according to audio recordings released this week by the National Transportation Safety Board.

The pilot, Michael O. Welton, and his only passenger, Roswitha Marold, were killed on Jan. 9 when Welton's single-engine Piper Malibu crashed in the southern Colorado mountains.

Both were from Waterloo, Iowa. Welton, 66, was a doctor. Marold, 70, was a retired business owner.

They were en route from the Phoenix area to Pueblo, Colo. The wreckage was found a day after the crash about 110 miles southwest of Denver and 60 miles west of Pueblo. It was in deep snow and heavy timber at about 9,700 feet elevation in the Sangre de Cristo range.

The NTSB hasn't released the cause of the crash. The investigator in charge of the case didn't immediately return calls.

The Associated Press obtained the audio recordings through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Welton's voice on the recording was calm and there was no hint of trouble in any of his conversations with controllers.

About 8 minutes after Welton's last transmission, a ground controller in Denver tried unsuccessfully to contact him. The controller then asked a pilot in another plane in the area to try, but he also got no response.

The controller then asked the other pilot and an air traffic controller in Pueblo to listen for an emergency locator signal from the plane, but neither heard one.

The controller also asked the other pilot to look for smoke coming from the ground, but he replied that none was visible.

- By Dan Elliott, Associated Press

(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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