ARLINGTON, Wash. -- Volunteers continue to look for a small plane that hasn't been seen since it took off from an Arlington airport on Saturday.

Crews have so far found no trace of the missing pilot and his Taylorcraft airplane.

Gordon Last, 51, was piloting his 1946 two-seater airplane (as seen in photo) when he departed Harvey Field. He was expected to return to the airport Saturday afternoon.

A ground search was started Saturday night after the pilot's girlfriend reported the man as missing when he did not return.

"He's a survivor, so I still feel he's still out there," said Last’s girlfriend Delvia Abila.

Department of Transportation Aviation searchers scoured the Snohomish County area by air on Sunday, flying a total of 45 hours using eight search planes and a Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office helicopter.

The search continued Monday as crews from WSDOT Aviation, the Civil Air Patrol and Washington Air Search and Rescue continued to fly over the Snohomish County area to look for the missing plane.

According to reports, the plane had no emergency locator beacon or transponder on board and no flight plan was filed. Abila said Last was on a pleasure flight and didn’t have his cell phone.

"His cell phone had died. The battery had died and he had not replaced it," she said.

Last's brother said the plane was not equipped with an emergency transmission device as required by law, but he said his brother knows what he is doing in the sky. Their dad and uncles were also pilots.

"He's really cautious. He checks the plane out fully, makes sure the plane is in 100 percent shape and he won’t fly unless everything's ready to go," David Last said.

With so little to go on, Tom Peterson of the state’s Department of Transportation said a visual search is the only option.

"We divide one of these black boxes into quarters and we assign them a quarter grid to fly which takes about two and a half hours to visually check one," Peterson said.

Last’s family said he generally flies in the Snohomish County area.

The search, based out of the Arlington Municipal Airport, will continue Tuesday if the weather cooperates.

Anyone who may have information on Last or his aircraft can contact the search staff at missingaircraft@wsdot.wa.gov or 360-410-0461.