Boulder County Sheriff's Office crews spent Sunday night combing the area around Eldorado Springs for a possible downed aircraft that vanished from radar, and as of Monday morning, they still had not found it. Ground teams, drones and a helicopter were all pulled into the search after officials got word of the missing plane just before 10 p.m.
According to Denver7, the aircraft was last seen on radar in the Eldorado Springs area Sunday evening. Officials said they received the report of a possible downed aircraft at 9:42 p.m., and the sheriff's office dispatched crews immediately for a combined ground, drone and helicopter search.
Search Resumes With More Air Support
Despite the overnight push, crews have not yet been able to locate the plane, per the same Denver7 report. They plan to resume their search at 9 a.m. today with additional aerial support, though it remains unclear where the aircraft went down or whether anyone was aboard.
The search comes a little more than two weeks after a far more dramatic scene played out elsewhere in Boulder County, when emergency dispatchers on September 17 got several calls reporting that two planes had collided mid-air, according to CBS News. Responders in that incident found two separate crash sites near 10,000 Niwot Road, and the National Transportation Safety Board later confirmed a Cessna 172 had collided with a Sonex Xenos aircraft. CBS News reported that all three men killed in that crash were adults from the Front Range area.
A County With a History of Aviation Incidents
Boulder County has seen several aviation scares over the past few years. A Boulder County government release described a 2022 aircraft-related event in Lefthand Canyon in which the county coroner's office investigated the deaths of four people. In another case, a caller reportedly left a voice message in May 2025 claiming to have shot at an in-flight ultralight aircraft near Vance Brand Longmont Municipal Airport, prompting an investigation by the sheriff's office. And in August 2025, the Larimer County Sheriff's Office received a report of an aircraft crash near the Larimer-Boulder county line, according to information from Larimer County.
None of those earlier incidents have been confirmed to be connected to Sunday night's report near Eldorado Springs. For now, the fate of the aircraft last tracked on radar there remains unknown, and search crews are set to pick back up this morning with more help from the air.
