Hunt for English Channel crash pilot abandoned

Rescuers have decided not to resume a search for the missing pilot of a light aircraft that crashed in the English Channel, coastguards said.

An air and sea search was mobilised by British and French rescuers after the American-registered single-engine plane, with one person on board, came down in the middle of the Channel yesterday afternoon, about 15 miles off Dungeness in Kent.

Wreckage was later found by the French search and rescue helicopter, and last night teams worked against the clock to try to find the missing pilot before suspending the search after light faded.

"Having taken the advice of the RAF as well as the French rescue authorities, we have decided that we won't be resuming the search," a spokesman for Dover Coastguard said today.