Search for Earhart to resume next year

? The head of a Maryland company says he plans to resume the search for missing pilot Amelia Earhart early next year.

Earhart’s disappearance in 1937 at age 39 remains one of America’s great mysteries and the subject of continuing searches of the Pacific.

Earhart, a native of Atchison, had set numerous flying records when she began her final flight May 20, 1937, from Oakland, Calif. She made it as far as New Guinea, where she took off on July 2 for Howland Island on a 2,556-mile flight.

Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, never made it to the tiny atoll southwest of Hawaii. She radioed she was running low on fuel.

David Jourdan, president of Nauticos Corp., of Hanover, Md., said that his team of deep-ocean explorers would search a section of the South Pacific using sonar equipment in February.

Earlier this year, he led a 27-day search of waters within 100 miles of Howland that ended early because of equipment problems.

“We accomplished a tremendous amount, having covered two-thirds of our search and gaining great experience operating in this area,” Jourdan said.

Jourdan said he was confident that Earhart’s plane was located in the remaining one-third of the search area that his team was unable to cover.

“We are seeing terrain no human has ever seen before,” Jourdan said. “I hope to come back and have different news next year.”

Jourdan said that if the plane was recovered in good condition, it would be taken on a worldwide traveling exhibit.