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Fossett's Plane Found
otter42 writes "Sadly, it looks as if all those crazies claiming Steve Fossett was still alive were wrong after all. The NY Times has the confirmation that wreckage of Fossett's Bellanca Citabria was found. Now it's up to the NTSB to tell us why this happened, although, statistically, dollars to donuts it was engine/fuel-related."
that someone else found the crash site and (for reasons unexplained) took his ID and a grand in cash from it, then hid them where the hiker later found them
My guess would be that "someone" would have been something like a raccoon or a buzzard.
No body was found, and was purportedly "eaten by animals". Conspiracy theories live on!
Kudos to hiker that turned in what he found. I suspect many people would not have turned in the thousand dollars or so in cash had they made the discovery.
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They had been married forty years.
She surely knew how his life was likely to end:
In college at Stanford University, Fossett was already known as an adventurer; his Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity brothers convinced him to swim to Alcatraz and raise a banner that read "Beat Cal" on the wall of the prison, closed two years previously. He made the swim, but was thwarted by a security guard when he arrived. Steve Fossett
Exactly... An engine failure in something as slow as a Citabria would be easy to to "pancake" as they call it. Chances are he never saw the mountain which is very easy to happen..
Fossett was an experienced pilot. He wouldn't have been flying in IMC (instrument meteorological conditions) in the vicinity of a mountain below the minimum sector altitude, at least not intentionally.
Given that he was in a different area than he was expected, I suspect Steve had some sort of medical problem that incapacitated him. If the airplane was trimmed properly, it could have flown for a while before impacting the mountain at cruise speed.
Yes being a sail plane pilot is good experience if your engine quits. But have you ever flown a Citaboria? I have. Here is how you land one: The plane has no "flaps" so don't worry about those. While at pattern altitude (about 1,000 feet above ground) when you are on down wind abeam of the numbers. Put the engine to down to idle. Make two left turns and the plane will land right on the number. basically you loose that 1,000 feet "way fast" the Citaboria glides like a rock. You really have to keep the nose down or you run out of airspeed. By comparison any two seat trainer flys like a sailplane
If the engine quits that plane is going to land within only a couple miles at best. That said there was a road within walking distance of the crash site. Any reasonable pilot still in control of the aircraft would have at least attempted to aim for a clear area. I don't think he was in control when it hit the ground.
My gues is the caue was either a mechanical, non engine failure of the structure or control system or a medical problem.
Pilots of small planes don't need parachutes -- unless they're flying aerobatics (in which case they're required). The Citabria is a plane designed for aerobatics, although if Fossett wasn't planning on doing any he wouldn't have needed to take a 'chute.
(One of the things that makes a plane designed for aerobatics is that there are ways to make it easy to get out. I don't know about the Cit but for example on the Cessna Aerobat, you just pull the hinge pins (designed to be easy to pull) and the door comes off.)
And in a mountainous or heavily treed area, there's no such thing as "a decent crash landing", the plane is going to break up.
-- Alastair
You know, you don't have to click "Read More", then "reply" then type out two sentences if the article doesn't interest you. Go on to the next article if you don't care.