But they found Steve Fossett’s airplane in the middle of nowhere, and it appears he smashed it head on into a mountain:
Authorities have found the plane Steve Fossett was flying when he disappeared last year, but they have not found the millionaire adventurer’s body, the Madera County, California, sheriff said Thursday.
“They did locate an aircraft which we have now confirmed is the one Steve Fossett was flying when it disappeared last Labor Day,” Sheriff John Anderson told reporters at a news conference in Mammoth Lakes.
The plane apparently crashed head-on into the side of a mountain, and the damage was “so severe I doubt someone would’ve walked away from it,” the sheriff said.
They have confirmed it is his plane, and now the NTSB is going to haul the entire plane somewhere and analyze the wreck. Now I understand that they do this to locate design flaws that could endanger future fliers, but don’t we know what happened here? Fossett was a thrill-seeker and a daredevil, and he smashed his plane into a mountain. It just sort of seems like a waste of money to reconstruct this particular accident.
pud
Obama cannot win. Pennsylvania votes McCain. Watch and be amaze.
tavella
Well, the question they want to answer is did he smash into a
mountain because he was being a daredevil, or because there was a
mechanical flaw in the plane that left him unable to do anything
apart from hit a mountain. Daredevils can have mechanical
difficulties too.
Mr Furious
Agreed. It would be akin to reconstructing the body of a BASEjumper
after a mishap.
Michael D.
This was not one of his thrill seeking flights. It was just a casual day out.
SpotWeld
I’ve got to agree with the above. In the same sense, that when
someone dies outside of a doctor’s care there is a need for an
autopsy. There is always an investigation of an aircraft incident.
The insurance implications of a mechanical failure vs. pilot error
(or worse, control tower error) make this imperative.
Mr Furious
Actually, it’s more akin to reconstructing a car after a speeder
hits the bridge abutment. Determining whether or not his
brakelights worked might be interesting, but it was the scenario
that was the problem.
Zifnab
What Tavella said. This could be stupid people being stupid. Or it
could be a major wiring flaw that only happens at X-thousand feet.
Or any number of mishaps. Better to do the SoP and sleep better
knowing that the rest of the fleet isn’t going to start dropping
out of the skies than blindly chalk it up to Fossett being Fossett
and getting blind-sided by a series of future airplane crashes.
Jim Wilson
Agree as well. This is what the NTSB is all about, to figure out
what happened, in hopes of improving air safety. It doesn’t matter
whether the pilot was famous or not. The objective is the same.
jake
Wouldn’t everything have been incinerated? I think he survived and
was trying to get out. Unfortunately, after three weeks Sarah Palin
flew past on her wolf bustin’ crop duster. Poor old Steve was
looking a little shaggy by then and the Palinator had left her
stylin’ specs at home…
cleek
IIRC, nobody expected him to be flying anywhere near where the
plane was found: he was wildly off-course. that’s why it took a
year to find him. maybe they’re trying to figure out why that
happened.
Mr Furious
Isn’t small plane piloting considered inherently risky behavior
regardless of the underlying fault? At least in terms of insurance,
etc.?
SpotWeld
Oh course it’s also possible that taking the whole plane and
hauling it away as one piece to a hangar ro warehouse might be the
easiest way to recover what’s left of the body.
SpotWeld
I don’t know the ins and outs of insurance. But if he had an
indenity cluase that paid out if he died in a air crash it might be
of interest to determine if he infact had a fatal heart attack
first.
Mr Furious
I was just piggybacking on John’s sentiments on this specific
instance. Since plane mishaps are rare and this is the SOP, it’s
not really a big deal…I actually never understood why this story
was a big deal to start with. I never heard of this guy before.
None of which is intended to take away from the fact that he died,
and probably horribly.
comrade chopper
Chief Wiggum: “Ok folks, show’s over… Nothing to see here…
Show’s OH MY GOD! A horrible plane crash! Hey everybody, get a load
of this flaming wreckage! Come on, crowd around, crowd around,
don’t be shy, crowd around!”
Mr Furious
Then that’s an autopsy/investigation the insurance
company should initiate / pay for. Assuming that’s the only
question.
SGEW
I am automatically suspicious of all small plane accidents.
Remember Wellstone! /conspiracy theorist.
tagged45
Comrade Chopper beat me to it. They didn’t find any remains, if I
read correctly. I think Krusty faked his death in similar fashion
on a Simpsons episode.
Mr Furious
Um, does the editing work for anyone? ‘Cause I just tried to fix
that blockquote three times…
jake
Editing works for content (text), anything else, fuggedabodit.
SpotWeld
Mr. Furious: Sure, that makes sense. I did say I am ignorant of the
ins and outs. It may be that the NTSB is the best/only recognized
impartial authority on this sort of thing. Maybe the NTSB has to do
a preliminary to rule out a systemic aircraft or air control issue
and leave the rest of it to who ever has an interest (family,
insurance, etc.) I’m just saying that the crash cannot be
automatically be assumed to be caused by the pilot.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
MSNBC is reporting that no human remains were found. Bears, most
likely. Colbert was right.
BTW, if you want the shit scared out of you while learning
something useful, read Stephen Herrero’s Bear Attacks:
Their Cause and Avoidance before you go out hiking
again.
Jamey
Not if we get to see a recreation of the head
exploding on contact with the mountain. That would be cool!
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
It seems as if the only way to get paragraphs right now is to
wrap each para in P tags, using the buttons.
See?
comrade chopper
so let’s go looking around for a spitting image of
fosset named ‘rory b. bellows’.
Marshall
The day Steve Fossett was lost I was driving from San Francisco
to Las Vegas by way of Barstow. Just after Barstow we entered one
of those huge desert storm systems, a line of thunderheads
stretching North and South, and all of a sudden it rained so hard
and the wind blew so hard that it was hard controlling the car,
even when we slowed to 20 MPH. Soon after we left the storm, I
heard about Steve Fossett’s disappearance on the radio.
I have been convinced ever since that moment that that storm
killed him. I cannot see how a light aircraft could have flown
through it, and yet it came up pretty suddenly. Looking at the
map, I might still be right.
Zifnab
Yes.
I see what you did there.
Grr! Super omega-fail.
Marshall
A break command (“” without the spaces) will work too
(like this).
Comrade The Moar You Know
Hell, maybe you have a point. It’s always obvious what goes wrong
with a plane so why bother investigating?
/snark off
OK, I’ll confess, I’m bigoted; my father is a pilot and has been
for my entire existence on this planet. I go up on occasion with
an instructor for fun. As such, I’ve just always assumed that
finding out what went wrong with an aircraft, or with the human
flying it, or the software, or the air traffic control
procedures, or the radar tracking, or the assumptions made about
safety, or any number of things that you couldn’t possibly
imagine until you inform yourself about them, is kind of a big
deal. Read a goddamn NTSB report sometime before shooting your
mouth off about it being a waste of time to reconstruct ANY
aircraft accident. Maybe you’ll learn something.
fronobulax
Although Fossett’s activities entailed a certain amount of risk, I
had the impression he was a actually pretty cautious guy who
carefully prepared for what he was attempting. In any case, this
appears to have been a routine VFR plane flight – he wasn’t pushing
any boundaries here. When someone takes off on a routine flight and
doesn’t come back I think an NTSB investigation is entirely
appropriate. BTW, I like the new design.
Halteclere
A little off topic, but tangentially related – I’m not familiar
with plane wrecks but do know that when there is a train
derailment, the whole section of tracks where the derailment
occurred is removed and sent to a lab for analysis. And there are
response crews located around the US (one is in Memphis) whose job
is to clear out the wreck and open the rail as fast as possible.
Going to a derailment these crews get to waive all transportation
regulations for hauling heavy equipment (such as having proper flag
vehicles, oversized load restrictions, etc). But after cleaning up
the mess and returning to base, transportation regulations must
then be met.
Marshall
No, he was flying IFR and did not file a flight plan
(he didn’t have to). Not having a known course, they had to search
500 miles from Reno in all directions (except, of course, they
didn’t).
misfitina
How much money has already been wasted on this beacon of humanity
and his widow won’t even give $500k to help with the costs. Let’s
just call him buzzard food and move on?
Scrutinizer
So. Can I blockquote
FAIL
Scott H
I appreciate the NTSB not cherry-picking which parts of their
mandate they are going to exercise – unlike several other federal
agencies who have been much in the news lately.
trollhattan
Marshall, if those conditions you experienced were what he was
flying in, it’s not hard to imagine him becoming entangeled in a
storm cell and directed/drawn/forced into a mountainside while
flying blind by instruments. I’ve backpacked that section of the
Sierra and the scale is just huge, even by Sierra standards.
There’s no gradual transition from the wide, flat Owens Valley to
the east, they just jut up several thousands of feet from the
valley floor within a couple of miles. I’ll be interested to see a
detailed map of the precise location. I’ve found bits of airplane
wreckage on three different occasions–twice in the Sierra and once
on the Cascades. It’s an eery experience. At least his family can
now stop wondering.
trollhattan
That’s weird. I got a “bad behavior” warning after submitting, but
my post appeared anyway. I’ll try to be less bad.
Scrutinizer
Hmm.
ARGH ARGH ARGH!
AkaDad
If anyone was wondering why it says consistently wrong since
2002… ;-)
Stacy
Jim Pharo
Wrong title. Correct title: “To Be Callous.”
stickler
I kind of like the new design. But easily the best part is watching
the multiple episodes of keyboard-chair-interface failures.
Blockquotes! Argh! Fail! Fun! Twice as much fun as WordPress Error.
Brachiator
Even attributing an accident to “stupidity” or to
“pilot error” says nothing. Even if this turns out to be the case,
they might be able to come up with suggestions that might give
stupid or error-prone pilots additional options or aids to survival
(yah know, kinda like seat belts, anti-lock brakes and airbags).
Good question. But the short answer is that the
insurance industry employs a lot of people whose job is to
quantify risk. And driving in the Indy 500 is inherently
risky, but drivers, crew and auto designers do everything they can
to reduce the risk. Shorter answer: life is inherently risky and to
date, no one has got out alive.
Recently here in Southern California, there was a
terrible collision involving a freight train and a commuter train.
The transportation investigators have already reconstructed part of
the collision, and know pretty much exactly where along the track
the trains collided. After repairing the tracks, they moved two
trains at slow speed back and forth, using other info to
corroborate their findings. And they were able to do this after
carting away massive sections of track and wreckage.
tom.a
I’m actually more interested in what animal walked off with his
toasted corpse. Rich stunt man dies in a plane crash, whatever, big
brown bear gnawing on grilled dumb ass, I like.
Georgette Orwell
Don’t we already have enough federal authorities and/or departments
that investigate only what they feel like investigating instead of
following their mandate to review all incidents?
Dennis - SGMM
Fossett was flying a American Champion Model 8KCAB “Super
Decathalon.” While there are far fewer of that type flying than
say, Cessna 150’s, the Super Decathalon has shown no tendency to
randomly fly into large solid objects. Ask any light plane pilot
what they think about flying close to mountains. The NTSB
investigation is the equivalent of taking DNA samples from a driver
whose Honda Civic was found wrapped around a phone pole with a
half-empty bottle of whiskey under the driver’s seat.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Comrade Chopper beat me to it. They didn’t find any remains, if I
read correctly. I think Krusty faked his death in similar fashion
on a Simpsons episode.
Do you think he took a dive before the plane crash?
Citizen Kit
Lol, Madera IS the middle of the nowhere (do they get a bridge?).
It’s possible that they’ll never even find enough to know if he was there–air plane + mountain (especially the Sierra Nevadas) = puddle of pilot.
Puddles don’t survive the summer up there.
It doesn’t get too hot up there, yeah, but there’s a lot of things that would consider his remains tasty and are pretty fast eaters.
That said, we do have an obligation to try at the very least.
Grumpy Code Monkey
There should be at least a few bones around, though. Maybe teeth.
There are plenty of reasons why he could have crashed: weather, mechanical failure, instrument error, pilot error, und so weiter. The NTSB can conclusively rule out most of them. I don’t consider this a waste of time or money.
kilo
The airplane that Fossett was flying is a light two-seater designed for aerobatics. Given that he had a high-energy crash into terrain, and debris was scattered across a large area, they will be looking to rule out scenarios involving either in-flight loss of control, or structural failure. While it’s most likely that it will be written up as CFIT (controlled flight into terrain, aka "oops, I hit a mountain"), they have to investigate other scenarios in case it reveals a flaw that needs to be addressed in other aircraft of that type.
Accident findings also get fed back into pilot training – this is how the flight training system identifies areas that are not being taught well (or at all) and adapts to improve safety. Even if it is a CFIT incident, that’s one more story for new pilots to learn from.
As somebody pointed out upthread, NTSB accident reports are actually pretty interesting. Check ’em out here.
mes
If he was just out for what the LA Times called a "solo pleasure flight," why did he take $1,000 in hundred-dollar bills with him??
Gustav
Three Words,
700 Billion bailout
This is chump change
GL
Why did he carry the cash?
Because he could!
Doug H. (Fausto no more)
The odd thing is that the hoodie, licenses, and cash that started this hunt were not found with the wreckage. That, and the lack of a body with the plane, indicates to me that he might’ve jumped for it.
As for where he is now, the bears and coyotes would probably know.
baldheadeddork
John, with all respect you’re wrong about how the NTSB is going to investigate this.
The investigation for a general aviation flight is hugely different than what they do for a commercial airliner. I’ve been witness to a handful of NTSB investigations into small plane crashes and they’ve never done that kind of reconstruction.
They’re going to want to know a few things that can be determined without reconstruction. One, was the engine running at the time of impact. The propeller will have tell-tale damage on the leading edge if the engine was running and there will be internal engine damage if it has that kind of immediate stop under power.
Two, they’re going to want to determine if there was a structural failure. This also doesn’t require reconstructing the airplane. If debris is contained in the immediate area of the crash then the plane could not have broken up in flight. When you have an in-flight structural failure the debris will be spread over a wide area.
They’re also going to examine the cables that operate the control surfaces. Frayed cables that may have broken in flight will look a lot different than those that are broken in a crash. They’ll probably want to recover the cables and take them down if they think that might be a cause.
Laura
DougH, I think you’re overlooking the most likely reason his belongings were away from the plane. Same reason that people secure their trash in bear-proof dumpsters in the high country, or it gets scattered for an acre in all directions. Sorry to be blunt, but once animals get to the remains, pieces like a hoodie or a wallet get dragged around for long distances. A wallet especially is going to be a chew toy for a while.
I lived in Mammoth Lakes for eight years. The area where his belongings were found is incredibly steep and rugged; I can’t embed images here, but do a Google Images search for "Minaret Lakes," or "Minarets and Sierra," and that should give you an idea. Stunningly beautiful, but near-vertical rock in places.
Zuzu Hussein's Petals
Laura –
One of the most memorable road trips I’ve taken was a drive down 395 … the eastern side of the Sierras is unlike anything I’ve experienced as a lifelong Californian. Amazing.
Driving out of Yosemite (Tioga Pass) and then east felt like moving backwards through time…glaciers, volcanoes…
Laura
Zuzu –
Ohhhh, tell me about it. I moved away five years ago, and I miss it so much it takes my breath away sometimes.
Zuzu Hussein's Petals
Bestest memory of whole trip… Travertine Hot Springs .
The air was so clear and the space so empty you could hear the church bells miles away in town.
Liz
"Sorry to be blunt, but once animals get to the remains, pieces like a hoodie or a wallet get dragged around for long distances. A wallet especially is going to be a chew toy for a while."
I don’t recall the news saying anything about the items being chewed upon or bloodied at all. If they were, your theory is sound. If they weren’t… there are more questions to be answered.
Doug H. (Fausto no more)
Yeah, the items weren’t bloodied, but they were found a quarter-mile from the wreckage. So its not that unlikely he did go down with the ship.
Babb
I’m with tagged45…Steve is still out there somewhere alive and well!
TheDeadlyShoe
Maybe he jumped out when he saw a mountain?
jw
Chances are he either was incapacitated heart attack [perhaps), or altitude (10,000ft) has lower oxegen levels and could have went hypox, or he was clear in altitude, but the winds (rollers) that day could have very much pushed him downwards prior to clearing the mountain top, and he slammed into the mountain. The rollers that day were reported by other pilots to have been very treacherous. Apparently he washeading for Yosimite and Mammoth Lakes for sight seeing. Fly either direction from the airport he took off from and only West is the nicest area worth viewing. This obviously meant he wasnt looking for land speed record flats, but pleasure flying. Now we need to move on to Amelia A,and locate the remains of her doomed flight.
Laura
I don’t think the lack of blood tells us much. Many possibilities suggest themselves, the most likely being that his body had decomposed to some extent before the materials were dragged off, or that the hoody and wallet weren’t actually on his body but were in the plane with his gear. The money and ID cards looked a little ragged to me — I can certainly imagine them being in a wallet that was torn apart.
Also, remember that a whole year has passed — those items were under no less than 20 feet of snow from last December until at least May, if not June. I’ve seen a few dead animals in the spring thaw, that had been under the snow all winter, and not a one of them had a drop of blood on it.
And responding directly to Babb — if that wasn’t a joke, which is hard to tell on the Internets — there is absolutely no possibility that Steve Fossett could have hiked to any of the tiny towns or village outposts in Mono County (Madera County is where the plane crashed, but all the actual human beings in the area are in Mono County, and you can’t hike to Madera County habitations from there) without it being known by the locals. Mammoth Lakes, June Lake, Lee Vining, Bridgeport. Total aggregate population
trollhattan
He definitely hit at high speed, as the engine was several hundred feet from the fuselage. Critters with more than a year to work over the remains would have consumed all but a few bones by now. I suspect they’ll find a few bits, but only just that. It can be very difficult to comb a mountainous area and storms are due in tomorrow, which could completely cover it with snow until next summer.
Here are more details than in the wire stories available at the moment.
sacbee.com/830/story/1280768.html
Includes anecdotes about thunderheads in the area mountains that day.
dmbeaster
To follow up on Laura’s comment, the crash appears to be somewhere in the Ritter Range of the Sierra Nevada, based on this rough map of the crash site. The range is a steep jagged ridge of peaks, with the high point at Mt. Ritter (13,143). They are famous for a series of serrated peaks known as the Minarets. I have hiked and climbed there many times.
Another site for Sierra locals says the crash was east of Minaret Mine, which is located in a area of the Ritter Range known as Volcanic Ridge — here are pictures. The ridges goes east away from the north-south trending Ritter Range. It is a fun cross-country hiking destination because of the great views of the Ritter Range from the top — and it is only 11,500 in altitude. It does not get much use since there are so many much more attractice destinations nearby, and no trail.
Here is a winter picture of the Ritter Range viewed from the east from Mammoth Mountain, which was probably the direction of his approach. The reports indicate the crash site is at 10,000 feet — one I read said 9,700. That is actually a very low altitude in the range. He crashed in trees from some of the pictures I saw. It does not make sense as "misjudging" the peaks at that altitude, unless he was cruising low up a canyon (like Shadow Creek, which is on the north side of Volcanic Ridge) and got boxed in. More likely is a health, mechanical or weather related incident, although the weather was apparently good that day (it usually is that time of the year, with some possibility for thunderstorm activity, though much less so than earlier in the Summer).
It is only 70 miles or so from where he took off, so he was just having fun in a beautiful place. It is worth it to try to find out why.
I am not surprised that it took so long to find the crash — they recently just found a crash site and remains from the WWII era.
4jkb4ia
At least we are beginning to learn what happened.
Sabathia implodes.
4jkb4ia
I see my comment, but I am getting a 403 error: "You don’t have permission to access this server".
No Quarter, Did Laundry Last Week
There’s no way in hell they’re going to find the body even if they do take all the wreckage away and put it all back together again. Steve Fossett is currently living in a cave and serving as Sasquatch’s bitch.
I’ll reveal the video on my website as soon as the Loch Ness Monster’s cousin’s uncle’s imaginary friend is finished editing it.
Liz
They found his body. :(
Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s
The money would be better spent strip-mining and flattening that mountain so that future fliers won’t have the same trouble. All that ‘clean coal’ would also help to power all the computers of the people reading this article.