GEORGETOWN, Texas — A dog rescue group says the pilot of a small plane that disappeared over the Gulf of Mexico was flying to Central Texas to collect a disabled dog and deliver it to a foster home in Oklahoma.

Coast Guard spokeswoman Lexie Preston on Thursday identified the pilot as Dr. Bill Kinsinger.

The executive director of the Oklahoma Medical Board, Lyle Kelsey, says Kinsinger serves on the board and lives in Edmond, Oklahoma. Kinsinger is an anesthesiologist.

Monica Marshall coordinates flights for the nonprofit group Pilots N Paws and says she was tracking Kinsinger’s plane Wednesday when radar showed it veered off course by hundreds of miles.

Marshall says she has been unable to reach him by text and phone.

She says Kinsinger didn’t collect the disabled dog in suburban Austin, Texas.

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The U.S. Coast Guard searched the Gulf of Mexico Thursday for a small plane that didn't land at its scheduled location in Central Texas and stopped responding to air traffic controllers.

The pilot of a Cirrus SR-22 left Wednesday afternoon from a small airport in Oklahoma City after filing a flight plan to land in Georgetown, Texas, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Austin. The pilot was flying alone.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Lynn Lunsford said the plane kept flying and was last observed on radar 219 miles (352 kilometers) northwest of Cancun flying, at 15,000 feet (4,600 meters).

Coast Guard spokeswoman Lexie Preston in New Orleans said Thursday that the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, relayed to Coast Guard searchers that the pilot was the only person aboard the plane. 

Watchstanders at the Eighth Coast Guard District command center in New Orleans received a report from the North American Aerospace Defense Command Wednesday evening that the pilot was unresponsive likely due to hypoxia. 

NORAD launched two F-16 fighters from a base in Houston and made contact with the plane, where fighters performed military maneuvers in an effort to gain the pilot's attention, but the pilot appeared to be unresponsive.

The plane is registered to Oklahoma-based Abide Aviation.

Preston said Coast Guard aircraft were searching a broad area Thursday off the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.