Weather stops Idaho plane crash recovery; 5 dead

Bad weather Saturday morning turned back a recovery team attempting to reach the wreckage of a small airplane that went down in the central Idaho mountains in early December.

Valley County Sheriff Patti Bolen says a meeting is planned Monday to consider options for reaching the remote crash site and removing the bodies of the five family members who had been onboard.

Officials suspended the search for the aircraft in mid-December, but an intensive search by family and friends located the badly damaged aircraft Friday.

Fifty-one-year-old Dale Smith, a software executive from San Jose, Calif., was flying the single-engine Beech Bonanza from eastern Oregon to Butte, Mont., when he reported engine trouble.

Smith’s son and his wife, along with Smith’s daughter and her fiance, were on board.