Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Steve Fossett Update

It looks like the search may be over and that any new searches may be a "recovery operation". The NTSB has now listed the flight as "Injuries : 1 Fatal".

The only hope may be a possible radar track. Given that a month has passed and the fact that he carried little in the way of emergency supplies, there would be no chance of surviving for 30 days and any find would be to recover remains.

No ELT signal has ever been received from the aircraft or the watch Steve Fossett was wearing.

My opinion of what happened:

The Citabria that Steve Fossett was flying, was subject to an A.D. for the wing spar. The winds were very heavy that day and the wind gusts would have been especially bad over the mountains. (I speak from experience.) Mr. Fossett was flying an unfamiliar plane, that he had borrowed, and probably overstressed the aircraft.

I am posting a new poll to get an idea of how many pilots carry emergency supplies when they fly. When I drive through the desert, I always carry a basic kit for water production. This basic kit weighs about 3 ounces, total and should be the de facto part of any survival kit. I know that I can "live off the fat of the land" for some time, but water is essential to sustain life.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's a shame how vast numbers of people have put their faith in Google Earth, which is not a "real-time", or 'live-image' program. These images are photo-stitched.

While it IS sad, and unfortunate to think he could have possibly crashed his plane in those mountains...more than enough time has gone by to realize that anyone who understands mountain-life knows that any effort to find him WOULD be a mere 'recovery' effort at this point.

Has anyone considered that perhaps S.F. does not 'want' to be found? ....Just a thought.