Aerial search is certainly not a panacea, but it is an additional tool. I have seen aerial search in "thickly wooded" (ponderosa pine forest) areas achieve success where ground teams had not yet been effective. In general, in my experience, we did not consider an area thoroughly searched until it had been covered by ground teams, dogs, and eyeballs in the sky.

We actually did some controlled experiments with determining the POD when victims were inert vs actively signalling(standing in the open and waving). Any effort by the victim increased POD sharply. One gathers that there ws an attempt at some sort of fire, and there was reflective material present at the campsite. ??

Something else bothers me. The searchers were able to determine that they had reached a point close to the victim, therefore they must have known that there was terrain over which they had not walked. now granted that travel is thick woods is tough, they had to know that there was at least one hole in their pattern.

This is tending toward Monday morning quarterbacking, which I don't care for, and I was certainly not there, and I am completely ignorant of the influences on their decisions, which I am sure were complex, not for that matter have I ever searched in their terrain. Still, questions nag...

I can tell you that when searches enter the final stages and desperation reigns, you will try anything. I spent am entire day with a psychic going to a spot in our search area where she visualized we would find our victim. That area had been thoroughly covered numerous times. What impressed me about the situation was the sincerity of the psychic - she wasn't after money (we used her transportation)- she simply wanted relief from her very troublesome vision.