Hood River, Nunavut (Aug 18/03) - With the discovery of Chuck McAvoy's missing plane two weeks ago not only was an enduring mystery solved, it was the last of its kind in Nunavut and the NWT.

According to the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, there are no more reported missing aircraft to be discovered in the NWT or Nunavut. Planes believed to have crashed and gone missing in the NWT and Nunavut have all accounted for now that McAvoy's Fairchild 82 has turned up after 40 years.

The only plane still listed as missing North of 60 in Canada is in the Yukon, where a Piper aircraft with a single occupant on board disappeared while enroute to Watson Lake from Anchorage, Alaska in August 1999.

"It's all we came up with," said John Cottreau, public affairs advisor with the transport safety board.

"Which is a testament to our SAR (search and rescue) people, don't you think?"

Back in McAvoy's time and before, an aircraft going missing for weeks or even months was a much more common occurrence.

One pilot, Robert Gauchie, went missing for 58 days when his plane went down en route from Cambridge Bay to Yellowknife in April 1967. He survived his crash in sub-zero temperatures, consuming the store of Arctic Char he had on board while waiting to be rescued.

In 1929, an aerial Arctic expedition led by Col. Charles MacAlpine went missing for over three months and were given up for dead before they were finally rescued north of Bathurst Inlet.

Ian Campbell, a manager at Great Slave Helicopters, where one of its pilots discovered the McAvoy wreck 585 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife, said better aircraft and search and rescue methods, and the use of emergency locator transponders (ELTs) are likely why fewer aircraft go missing for longer periods of time these days.

"I'm sure things have improved since those days," said Campbell.

"But I'm also sure the way things are happening in the North today with all the diamond exploration and what not, a lot more ground is getting covered."