Search and rescue teams in Colombia have been left struggling to explain the disappearance of Polish pilot Witold Gilarski who went missing in Colombia at the start of March. He was last heard from when he made a 20-second phone call to a friend on 2 March saying he’d landed safe and was hiking out.
Witold, a 69-year-old retired consultant gynaecologist from Poland, had been taking part in the SRS Ozone Edition in Santa Fe de Antioquia, Colombia – approximately 250km to the north of Roldanillo, near the city of Medellin.
He launched from Calenton shortly before 11am on Saturday 1 March, on the last day of the comp, but he told friends he planned not to fly the task that day but fly his own route. Instead of flying south to the first turnpoint, he went north, which is where his tracker – relying on the mobile phone network – stopped sending signals. It last recorded him about three kilometres from launch.
A search effort was initiated that evening but turned up nothing. Then – to everyone’s relief – Witold got through...
