Overview

• Search teams used side-scan sonar to sweep more than 700 square miles of Lake Michigan between 2004 and 2025 without locating the wreckage
• Michigan Shipwreck Association director Valerie van Heest acknowledged mixed feelings, saying the effort honored victims even as it fell short of finding the plane
• The expedition uncovered nine other shipwrecks and led to the discovery of two unmarked graves containing remains of Flight 2501 victims
• Adventure novelist Clive Cussler provided financial backing for the search until 2017, bolstering the association’s independent efforts
• Northwest Orient Flight 2501, a propeller-driven DC-4 bound from New York to Seattle, plunged into Lake Michigan during a sudden storm on June 23, 1950, killing all 58 aboard