The families of pilots lost on flights through B.C.’s Rocky Mountains in the past couple of years are hoping to establish a support network for the loved ones of missing people. Tammy Neron was a prominent figure in the search for her brother Dominic, whose Mooney went down near Revelstoke in 2017 but wasn’t found until Sept. 10. He and his girlfriend Ashley Bourgeault were on their way from Penticton to Edmonton when the aircraft went down. After the official search ended, Tammy Neron led a private effort to find the couple and also kept the search in the news. “We feel that, from our experience, we could make this a little less difficult for other families that are going through the same thing,” Neron told the CBC. “Because it is devastating, and you get that sense of hopelessness, but you can’t give up.”
Neron has been talking with the families of Alex Simons and Sydney Robillard whose Piper Warrior went missing somewhere between Cranbrook and Kamloops on June 8, 2017. The pair and their aircraft have never been found. The flight originated in Lethbridge and they stopped for fuel in Cranbrook. “It’s hard when you have nothing to pay respects to, it’s hard when there’s no body, it’s hard when you don’t have a formal funeral,” Simons’ mother Denise Weisgerber told Kamloops This Week on the anniversary of the presumed crash.