Fossett's Plane Found 356
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."
Or weather, or health related (Score:4, Informative)
I think the cliff he hit was the problem (Score:5, Informative)
At that high an altitude, if you get clouds/ fog, you can run into a mountain at 10,000 feet, even if you're a good pilot ( who forgot to check his map).
NTSB said that the wreckage looked like high velocity impact, with little chance of survival.
Re:Or weather, or health related (Score:4, Informative)
Other sources are providing more information. According to CBC [www.cbc.ca], the plane slammed into a mountain.
Anderson said no remains were found in or near the aircraft, but said the crash was so severe that "I doubt someone would have walked away from it."
The plane appears to have crashed head-on with the mountainside before disintegrating, he said. The aircraft's engine was found about 90 metres from where the fuselage and wings were found.
Head on collision (Score:5, Informative)
They're saying that the damage looks like he flew straight into the side of the mountain and that it was extremely unlikely that it was a survivable impact.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/02/steve.fossett.search/index.html [cnn.com]
The area (Score:5, Informative)
As mentioned in another post, as best as I can tell from the news articles, this [gass.ca] is a Google Earth view of the area he went down. The Minaret Lake area is where the hiker found his ID and money, and the Minaret Peak is near where his plane hit.
It's called "Controlled flight into terrain" (Score:3, Informative)
It's an all-too-common occurrence in aviation. It even occurs to big, commercial flights. For example, Eastern Airlines flight 401 [wikipedia.org] (in 1972).
By all accounts his plane was equipped with an ELT and a radio. Presumably he would have used one or both if an engine failure or other mechanical problem occurred and he had some time while gliding.
Re:Check your own logic before calling others craz (Score:5, Informative)
Re:My experience that day (Score:5, Informative)
Barstow is 256 miles [google.com] from Mammoth Lakes. Granted, that's by car, but it's a fairly straight-shot route.
That's like saying a thunderstorm in New York City killed someone in Washington DC
Re:He's still kicking! (Score:2, Informative)
Why do people think that small airplane pilots need parachutes? They don't have ejection seats nor do they have any decent way to bail out in an emergency. In the cases where you could actually get out and deploy the parachute properly, you would probably have enough control of the airplane to make a decent crash landing.
Not Engine Failure -- Viz or Wind Shear (Score:1, Informative)
In the last year, I've asked several private pilots what they thought had happened to Steve Fossett, and every single one of them said the same thing: they thought he was flying in a box canyon or over a mountain range and experienced sudden wind shear. (Do a Google search and look up the causes/effects.)
Basically, wind shear can push a small aircraft into a dive -- especially over a mountain range or in a canyon -- so fast that a pilot has almost no time to react.
However, if he flew straight into a mountain, then the visibility must've been poor (as another post mentioned above, he may have run into a sudden storm), and he mis-judged his altitude.
(I'd also like to ask the usual idiots to quit making jokes about his death -- I have friends who knew the man personally and participated in the search, and stuff like this pisses me off. He was a human being who was liked by quite a few people, so knock off this juvenile shit.)
Re:He's still kicking! (Score:4, Informative)
General aviation pilots wear chutes all the time when they do spin training. Spin training is only required for instructors, but many pilots get it anyway. Chutes are required and are most certainly used for it.
Re:NTSB? (Score:1, Informative)
Aviation accidents are public record because the associated causes are often used to save other lives. Everything ranging from procedures, poor decision making, and aircraft failure are used to train/retrain pilots. Surprisingly, often a complex chain of events lead pilots to make poor decisions. These chain of events must be understood to other pilots to avoid the same accident.
You'd be amazed how many crashes are blamed on pilot error until they have enough evidence to show it was actually the airplane or bad procedures which lured pilots into performing the wrong action.
For example, three or four commercial airline crashes were originally blamed on pilot error. We now know the cause is bad hydraulics which reversed their output. This caused the pilot to correct with rudder - yet because the hydraulics were malfunctioning (unknown at the time), the rudders did exactly *opposite* what they were supposed to do. This caused the plane to go inverted and eventually do a "dearth spiral" into the ground. Since then pilots have been trained to identify this type of failure, which should never happen again as it was also corrected by adding additional hydraulic (tri-redundancy; two should overpower one faulty value which reverses the actuator).
Re:Head on collision (Score:3, Informative)
Don't they usually have the option of ejection and parachuting in modern planes?
No. This wasn't an F-16. And it looks like the kind of accident where the pilot's first sign that he was in trouble was approximately 0.2 seconds before impact.
If nothing was wrong with the plane, he probably flew it right into the side of the mountain under power, not realizing the mountain was right there until it was, well, right there. If something was wrong with the plane, he probably could have successfully glided it to a survivable impact. There's rarely any use for a parachute in a small, single-engine airplane. And in cases where it would be useful, they make them so you actually put the parachute on the plane itself, which is actually a lot more useful for a number of reasons related to both the safety of using it, and reducing damage to the plane itself.
Re:Too early for amature guesses. (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know what it is but the end result looks like controlled flight into the ground.
Yeah, I don't get the "statistically, dollars to donuts it was engine/fuel-related", because statistically, CFIT is a much more common cause of air accidents than engine or fuel problems. Fuel problems are actually one of the *least* likely causes, be it contamination, starvation or exhaustion.
There were reportedly clouds at around the altitude he'd have been flying at that day obscuring mountain peaks like this one. I think the most likely cause at this point is he was flying in a cloud and ran into the mountain. It happens, even to airliner pilots with sophisticated ground proximity warning systems. General aviation pilots usually have either no such equipment, or rudimentary ground avoidance equipment. I'm not sure what, if anything, his plane would have been equipped with, but even if it had such equipment, it wouldn't necessarily have been enough to prevent a CFIT accident.
Re:That's really a shame. (Score:4, Informative)
Chevy Chase and the estate of Generalissimo Francisco Franco hold joint rights to that meme [wikipedia.org].
Re:That's really a shame. (Score:5, Informative)
He pushed the envelope in sailing and flying, setting more than 100 records. He was also active with the Boy Scouts at the national level, even heading up the National Eagle Scout Association. He set the bar very high, and inspired thousands, maybe millions. His money was incidental, though it helped him to set those records. It's just the kind of person he was. That's why so many people care about it.
Weather History (Score:5, Informative)
Mammoth Lakes, CA
Week of Sept 2, 2007
No precipitation.
http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KMMH/2007/9/3/WeeklyHistory.html [wunderground.com]
See the radar loop from that date by using the link in the Radar Archive box near the bottom-right of this page:
http://www.wunderground.com/radar/radblast.asp?ID=HNX®ion=c1&lat=37.65124893&lon=-118.98217010&label=Mammoth%20Lakes%2C%20CA [wunderground.com]
Re:He's still kicking! (Score:5, Informative)
I've flown a Citabria. It's designed for aerobatics (the name is "airbatic" spelled backwards, even) and, at least in the plane I flew, the "seat" is actually a sling that holds your parachute. There was no way to sit in the thing unless you were wearing one.
Of course, it may be possible to buy a version of the airplane with normal seats--epecially if you're a billionaire, as Fossett was--but I never saw one myself.
Re:My experience that day (Score:3, Informative)
Have you ever seen a MCC squall line? [wikipedia.org] Coherent bands of severe weather and linked thunderstorms can easily span distances of 300 miles.
That's like saying a thunderstorm in New York City killed someone in Washington DC
Your example, set on the Atlantic seaboard, tells me you have no familiarity with continental severe weather. Yes, the same storm system someone experiences in place "X" can kill someone at about the same time in place "Y" 200-300 miles away. Predominately, in a north or south direction. (That's the typical alignment of squall lines). And, interestingly enough, the map you were so kind to provide shows that Barstow and Mammoth Lakes are at a distance and relative bearing that fit pretty well with mesoscale storm phenomena.
Sounds pretty feasible to me.
Re:He's still kicking! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Citabria, huh? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Affordable crash beacon? (Score:2, Informative)
Location? (Score:3, Informative)
Right, based on the NOTAM [faa.gov] the center of the no-fly zone is at 37.658889N,119.125556W [google.com].
Re:He's still kicking! (Score:3, Informative)
Must be a US rule. Back when I got my license (in Canada), spin training was required for all pilots and we didn't wear 'chutes. For a commercial license, the flight test includes getting into a full spin (at least two full turns) and then recovering on a given heading.
'Chutes are required for aerobatics, but simple spins aren't considered such. (Granted, there are some kinds of aircraft that should not be spun because they don't recover well. They're placarded "DO NOT SPIN". Some you really have to force to get them to spin: a C-172 just kind of wallows and will pretty much recover by itself if you let go.)
Re:He's still kicking! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:He's still kicking! (Score:4, Informative)
They discontinued teaching spin recovery in primary training in about 1995 because NTSB research indicated more people were being killed in crashes resulting from spin recovery training, than being killed in spins. A gruesome but pragmatic decision.
You're free to go get training in spin recovery yourself, and most instructors recommend it. I believe that qualifies as aerobatic instruction and parachutes are required, but I'm not sure.
Re:Common problems for private pilots... (Score:3, Informative)
If the rule is the same as it was when I was flying, you can go above 10,000 feet to a maximum of 12,000 feet without oxygen for a maximum of 1/2 hour. Otherwise stay below 10,000. I was a passenger in a 172 on VFR when the pilot, an experienced Viet Nam helicopter vet with several thousand hours, went to near 12,000 to get above some clouds for a few minutes. The effect was noticeable almost immediately. We zipped back down through a hole in the clouds pretty quickly (fortunately). He mentioned that had his brother been flying (who owned the plane) "he would have gone underneath the whole way." at about 3,000 feet where the weather was crappy. Well, Yeah!! I would have, too! 3,000 feet when you can actually SEE the ground is a good thing! (Note: Viet Nam era helicopter pilots are crazy bastards. No fear.)
Remains were found in the wreckage. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:He's still kicking! (Score:2, Informative)
Federal Aviation Regulation 91.307 section C
(c) Unless each occupant of the aircraft is wearing an approved parachute, no pilot of a civil aircraft carrying any person (other than a crewmember) may execute any intentional maneuver that exceeds
(1) A bank of 60 degrees relative to the horizon; or
(2) A nose-up or nose-down attitude of 30 degrees relative to the horizon.