THE mother of missing RAF serviceman Corrie Mckeague is refusing to give up hope that her son may be alive despite a massive police search of a landfill site for his body.

Nicola Urquhart, 47, from Dunfermline, Fife, said: “I know in my head that the chances of Corrie being alive are slim but I’m not giving up hope until he is found and brought home to me.”

The 23-year-old RAF serviceman went missing during a night out in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk on September 24. He was last seen going into a loading bay known as the Horseshoe, which contains waste bins.

Initial records suggested a bin collected within an hour of his last sighting weighed 11k (1st 10lb), meaning it could not have contained a person. But last week it emerged the true weight was 100kg (15st 10lb).

When her son disappeared Urquhart, a police officer, launched her own investigation, hiring private detectives, carrying out a reconstruction of her son’s last movements and studying aerial drone footage of the area where he was last seen. Her Find Corrie Facebook page has more than 120,000 members and Hollywood star Tom Ford recorded an appeal for witnesses.

“I’ve been doing the best I can. I need to know when I go to sleep at night that I’ve done everything I can to find Corrie,” she told the Sunday Herald.

“Being a police officer has made some of this easier but it also makes it the worst experience I have ever had as I know what terrible things can happen to people.

“I can normally deal with things but sitting about and waiting for the search is unbearable. I find ways to cope with it – mostly by talking with my other two sons, Darroch, 21, and Makeyan, 26. The boys have been brilliant and they are doing really well.”

Urquhart has been supported by family, friends and work colleagues during the five-month investigation into the disappearance of her son, a gunner in No 2 Sqn, RAF Regiment, based at Honington in Suffolk.

“I want to thank family and friends for their support and the police officers who have done so much. The search of the landfill won’t be a pleasant experience,” she said.

“I was particularly amazed and heartened by the kindness and support I received from so many strangers through social media. It has restored my faith in the goodness of people and helped me carry on.

“When I found out about the mistake with the bin lorry, my first reaction was that I felt bad about upsetting all these people and bringing them on this journey with me. But since then I have been overwhelmed by messages of support.”

Suffolk Police said finding out about the bin lorry weight mistake was “sobering” and “frustrating”. It had been known that Mckeague’s mobile phone tracked the same route and at the same pace as the lorry since early on in the investigation.

The search team has trawled through 60 tonnes of waste at the landfill site in Milton, Cambridgeshire and it could take the team of eight trained officers up to 10 weeks to sift through the rubbish. The search area covers around 920 sq m (9,900 sq ft) and is up to 8m (26ft) deep.

“I am trying not to look ahead and taking each day as it comes,” said Urquhart. “We may never find out what happened to Corrie until there is a post-mortem. But just now I’m focusing on the police finding Corrie. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I haven’t given up hope that he may still be alive. After all, last week we didn’t know about the weight of the bin lorry. Some other new evidence could turn up.

“He is my son and I can’t give up until he is physically with me.”

In January, it was discovered that Mckeague’s girlfriend, April Oliver, is pregnant with their child.