miles southeast of atlantic city shortly before 3:00 this afternoon and the plane was from michigan bound for atlantic city and "action news" reporter sdal at the coastguard station atlantic city tonight. >> "action news" identified pilot mike ol moore oral surge gone gay lord michigan he was the only person on board the single engine airplane tonight a search and recovery effort continues that hour. >> a coastguard helicopter was on route to the crash site. it's in the atlantic city ocea ocean. >> there was debris on scene how much debris or what was on scene i cannot speak of. >> faa says single engine moody 220 crashed 2:45 in the ocean and plane departed gaylord michigan and headed to atlantic city interests nagal airport when something went terribly wrong. four coastguard vessel, noah ship and new jersey state police and others were actively at the site with any sign of the pilot hoping to rescue him. >> any time the sun goes down it's hard to see things. we have a lot of assets on scene right now. >> "action news" learned plane left gaylord noon and was supposed to land at atlantic city international 2:558 cor cording to flight aware. the moody m 20 never m

coastguard suspended its search for 68 year-old missing pilot. his plane went down 7 miles off the coast of atlantic city yesterday afternoon. "eyewitness news" new jersey reporter cleve bryan is at the coastguard air station in egg harbor township right now with more, cleve. >> reporter: coastguard tells me that poor weather conditions forced them to stop looking for pilot michael moyer, several times yesterday and this morning but this afternoon they got a clear look at that scattered debring field and decided they should call off the search for good. >> radar contact just 800 feet in the ocean. >> reporter: this radio transmission was end of the long, tense process to make contact with michael moyer from gaylord, michigan. data from flight aware.com shows he took off around noon from gaylord in a moon i m20 single engine main similar to the one in this picture. within 22 minutes he rose to 5,000 feet above the earth and for two hours there were no radio transmissions. this unusual behavior caused norad to scramble two f-16 fighter jets. >> when aircraft failed to respond to controllers, we launched, fortunately at a time we were able to get visual of the aircraft itself. it had already started its downw