The National Transportation Safety Board cited Mr. Smiley’s case and four other accidents in a recent letter urging the F.A.A. to tighten its procedures for reporting lost aircraft and quickly getting radar data to the Air Force. The board said miscommunication, a lack of trained personnel and other problems were hindering rescue efforts.

“The whole process needs to get nailed down a lot tighter than it is,” said Scott Dunham, a radar expert for the safety board who drafted the letter.

The Air Force Rescue Coordination Center in Florida, the agency chiefly responsible for getting inland searches started, said it helped search for 227 missing planes and helicopters in 2008, the latest figures available. The center could not say how many fatalities or injuries were associated with those searches.

In Mr. Smiley’s case, there was a mix-up in terminology: An F.A.A. air traffic manager reported to the Air Force that he had a signal from an emergency beacon; the Air Force uses the term emergency transponder. The Air Force, believing the call was related to a different emergency signal south of Atlanta, did not begin a search.

The safety board, in its letter, placed most of the responsibility for the mix-up on the Air Force.

But the board also said the F.A.A. manager should have realized that a search had not gotten under way when the Air Force controller did not reply that a case had been opened. After the manager made his report to the Air Force, F.A.A. controllers continued to discuss the signal, but they did not take further action because they believed it had been reported properly, the letter said.