Hikers May Have Found Fossett Items 219
An Anonymous reader writes "CNN is reporting 'A weathered sweat shirt, cash and a pilot license with Fossett's name were found Tuesday near Mammoth Lakes, police Chief Randy Schienle said.' The license did not have a photo. '"We're not certain that it belongs to Steve Fossett, but it certainly has his name on the ID," Schienle said.'"
The body? (Score:2, Funny)
The body is being kept in a cooler offsite, for a conference tomorrow in California
I bet Hans Reiser would know where the remains are (Score:3, Funny)
He has a knack for that sort of thing.
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Location (Score:4, Interesting)
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There's a pass there also. If you were going to cross the Sierras in a small plane, you would definitely go down to Mammoth, especially if you were going to L.A. And you never cross mountains perpendicularly, you always approach at an angle.
So, either he's dead in the mountain somewhere and his stuff was carried there by a bear or something OR it's a treasure hunt or something. And he's out of the country with a new name, new face, and no mortgage backed security holdings. ;)
Re:Location (Score:5, Interesting)
As I see it, there are essentially three possibilities. First, Steve's instrumentation failed and he flew not only in the wrong direction but also ended up flying into the lake. Unlikely, given his experience, but even the best sometimes over-rely on instrumentation, and I've spoken to some damn good WW2 pilots who have assured me that prior to reliable instrumentation, people often took a fatal wrong turning in a cloud, or mistook a really smooth river for a runway. All in all, I consider this unlikely but within the realms of possibility.
The second option is that he crashed somewhere relatively near to where the belongings were found, where "relatively near" would be the distance you could expect a hardened survivor with plenty of experience of extreme conditions to be able to travel given his supplies and the availability of natural resources. In this case, it is possible he deliberately left a marker to (a) avoid walking in circles, and (b) inform searchers he'd survived that long and was in that general proximity. It's not unknown for people to leave such markers, and if there was a reason to believe the crash site would never be found (such as being in a lake), this could well be the only sort of marker he could realistically leave.
The third option - the most likely but also the most depressing - is that he got clear of the wreckage but was killed by a bear or other large predator, and that what we are seeing is a location where such a predator decided to take a snack. If this is the case, we might still locate the wreck, but this may well be all we'll ever see of Steve Fossett.
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There was a website once with satellite photos to help look, does anyone remember what it was?
Kinda hard to tell from google maps, but something like this [google.com] may be all that you can see...
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It was set up on Amazon's Mechanical Turk page, though when I went to my bookmark last Thursday I got a page does not exist error. I haven't bothered to try navigating back to it from Amazon's front page.
The money is mine. (Score:2, Funny)
Good Samaritan takes stuff (Score:5, Funny)
15 minutes later old man comes out of lake after a refreshing swim and says, "Hey, who the fuck took my wallet and my shirt!?"
headline/CNN care about the photo for no reason (Score:4, Informative)
It's funny both the slashdot summary and CNN note that the police said the pilot's license didn't have a photo.
For good reason. Pilots' licenses don't have photographs. I think the police there have never seen anything like it and are just plain perplexed.
Some genuine news here. (Score:3, Informative)
From the Mammoth Times.
Yawn,I used Google Earth to visit the Minarets and Shadow Lake area. No blue and white trash pile evident to my untrained eye. Then perhaps the Google picture was pre accident 2006. Oh well.
New discovery revives search for Fossett
Wednesday, 01 October 2008
Shortly after noon today, Mono County Sheriff Search and Rescue teams will begin a search for the wreckage of lost air-adventurer Steve Fossett's plane, which went down in the California/Nevada area a year ago September. The search is based on discovery of a sweater and three of Fossett's aviation ID cards in the Minarets on Monday by Preston Morrow, a local hiker who works at Kittredge Sports. The search will begin on the John Muir Trail between Dorothy and Shadow Lakes. Prior searches focused on land east of the Glass Mountains.
The California Highway Patrol helicopter from Fresno will fly in the search teams.
Fossett was declared dead in Feburary of this year.
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 01 October 2008 )
Source: http://www.mammothtimes.com/content/view/94652/1/ [mammothtimes.com]
Re:Some genuine news here. (Score:5, Informative)
Real breaking news (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Real breaking news (Score:4, Informative)
Which department? (Score:2)
Who is Emelia Earhardt? Is she related to Amelia Earhart [wikipedia.org]?
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Not his license (Score:3, Informative)
Oh yeah we all have "Steve Fosset" written in our pilot licenses, specially the ones that like to go hiking.
Why don't these self-proclaimed journalists don't do some research instead of coping and pasting the Reuters cable?
Do all pilot licenses have a photo?
Did his license had a photo?
Is it in fact a pilot license or they are not sure?
Fosset's Plane confirmed found (Score:2)
From CNN:
Authorities found the plane Steve Fossett was flying when he disappeared last year, but they have not found the remains of the millionaire adventurer, the Madera County, California, sheriff said Thursday.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/02/steve.fossett.search/index.html [cnn.com]
Photo (Score:2)
Here's a site with a photo [cbs47.tv] of the wreckage. Doesn't look like it was survivable...
CNN: Fossett plane found (Score:2)
Re:It's a hoax, people. (Score:5, Funny)
In other news, a salon discount card with Amelia Earheart's name and picture was found floating in the South Atlantic by a passing schooner.
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Even stranger, the underwear appears to have been there since 1955 [imdb.com]
Not a hoax, they found the plane (Score:3, Informative)
tm
Re:It's a hoax, people. (Score:5, Funny)
That's 'cause the ALIENS took 'im.
And they kept the plane.
Re:It's a hoax, people. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's a hoax, people. (Score:4, Insightful)
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To me, that would be an expensive hoax, because that would have to be turned in. If the license turns out to be faked, then it might be an even more expensive hoax if a prosecutor tries to file a suit for perpetrating fraud.
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Even more expensive than that 'cos they've faked the wreckage of a small plane [google.com] near where the other stuff was found.
And the fake plane has his tail number on it, it was confirmed by the sheriff late last night.
"hoax!" - fool :)
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It's not too far fetched for the person finding the items to not be in on any hoax. Fossett himself may have planted the items to mark his trail for rescuers as well, he would assume that the wreckage would be found, leaving a trail wouldn't be unresonable.
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Maybe the person that turns in the fake ID, if they find that person knew it was a fake.
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"You apparently know nothing of the legal system."
If you think someone presenting a fake ID to the police and pretending it to be of a deceased person isn't in for serious charges, then you sir, must know nothing of the legal system.
"There is no fraud."
Fake driving licenses do tend to be looked upon by most police forces as fraud.
Re:It's a hoax, people. (Score:5, Informative)
So our hoaxer forges 3 separate IDs, in one case getting all the original information that was on Fossett's FAA card, and adds $1005? That's one heck of a hoax. I suppose you could argue that's he's trying to get a reward from Fossett's rich widow for "finding" her husband's final resting place... but after he couldn't get ahold of the family's lawyers, he went to the police. Seems that would be the last thing a hoaxer would want to do, is get the police and authorities involved; I imagine forging federal IDs is a pretty serious offense. Doesn't make sense.
True, finding the contents of his wallet off on their own is odd... but animals are curious and like to chew on things, especially when they're hungry. In the middle of winter in the Sierra mountains, a bear or fox might decide that a leather wallet was better to eat than nothing and tear the wallet apart for a snack. Bears in particular will eat damn near anything, edible or not.
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Just for the record, FAA pilot information is public and it would be trivial to get all of the information that would appear on Fossett's pilot certificate. However, performing the actual forgery is well beyond simply finding that information, and this doesn't smell like a hoax to me. Also note that an FAA pilot certificate is not ID, or at least not photo ID, as it has no photo on it, just a name. In order to be valid it must be combined with government-issued photo ID. But it's still probably pretty harsh
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*MY* pilot certificate was printed on a laser printer, in black, in the middle of an 8 1/2" x 11" piece of paper. I had to cut it out with scissors and get it laminated. If Fossett didn't bother with the lamination step, it would be pretty easy to DIY.
(I was somewhat annoyed, given that I'd spent $5000 for that bit of paper, that it wasn't just a little fancier.)
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Except that the photo of his alleged things clearly shows a new-style plastic-from-the-start certificate complete with hologram. Kind of hard to forge that.
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Not to mention the "reward" would likely be in the amount of $1005.
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The hiker, Preston Morrow, said he found an FAA identity card, a pilot's license, a third ID and $1,005 in cash tangled in a bush off a trail just west of the town of Mammoth Lakes on Monday.
I wonder if the hiker bothered to look *up* ?
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They've already found wreckage [bloomberg.com], so this is basically a sure thing. The real question is did Fossett survive the crash, and if so where did he go on-foot. If he died were his remains consumed by wild animals (wild cats and bears), possibly making it impossible to ever recover them.
Re:It's a hoax, people. (Score:5, Informative)
Having actually searched for, and found, missing persons and aircraft wreckage on the ground in that general location in the Sierras, I can tell you that there are many more undiscovered crash sites than you might believe. The odds are good that it could be any of dozens of aircraft that have gone missing in recent years, including the one that carried Fossett, but not good enough to be a 'sure thing'. This is why they have to go in and make sure.
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in addition, more recent news [guardian.co.uk] confirms the aircraft wreckage found is probably his.
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>They've already found wreckage [bloomberg.com], so this is basically a sure thing
Having actually searched for, and found, missing persons and aircraft wreckage on the ground in that general location in the Sierras, I can tell you that there are many more undiscovered crash sites than you might believe. The odds are good that it could be any of dozens of aircraft that have gone missing in recent years, including the one that carried Fossett, but not good enough to be a 'sure thing'. This is why they have to go in and make sure.
The tail number matches.
Re:It's a hoax, people. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's not. The certificate has a small tear taken out of it. The other IDs didn't look to have fared quite as well, but also don't show any obvious burn marks - they're torn, tattered, and dirty. A year of exposure to the elements probably caused all the damage you see to those papers and the bills.
More plausible: He was able to get the plane on the ground, probably destroyed it in the process, suffered significant injuries, and was unable to get help. He may have left some items behind, dropped them, or perhaps his body was disturbed by wildlife. I expect they'll find more evidence upon searching more thoroughly.
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This is a hoax.
Yeah but who is the hoaxer?
Psuedocide (Score:2, Insightful)
Andy Kaufman [museumofhoaxes.com] is a recent one I can think of.
Here's a quick list of some psuedocides [wikipedia.org]. Obviously, it is not very complete though, since Andy Kaufman isn't listed... But I guess this kind of crap really happens. Perhaps, bored with living the life of a millionaire, Mr. Fossett decided to do something exciting, like "die".
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Andy Kaufman did not fake his death. That is a total urban legend, which is why it's not mentioned on that Wikipedia page.
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/kaufman.asp [snopes.com]
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Kaufman was a very bad example then. There have certainly been others though, so the original premise of my reply still holds true, I guess.
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After all, he is literally the kind of guy who'd come up with a successful routine, then invite another audience in and bore them to tears, intentiona
he bailed out... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:It's a hoax, people. (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, so a world-renowned pilot takes off in 2,000 pounds of airplane, steel, fuel, and glass, What's found? A partially burned piece of some of the most flammable things on the plane,
Have you seen the remains of the towers on 9/11? It's bizarre what can come out of a catastrophic event.
I'm not saying it's genuine or fake, but your criteria doesn't prove anything either.
Re:It's a hoax, people. (Score:4, Funny)
Ok, so a world-renowned pilot takes off in 2,000 pounds of airplane, steel, fuel, and glass, What's found? A partially burned piece of some of the most flammable things on the plane,
Have you seen the remains of the towers on 9/11? It's bizarre what can come out of a catastrophic event.
I'm not saying it's genuine or fake, but your criteria doesn't prove anything either.
Stewart: "how do you know the twin towers collapsed there?"
Joe: "Well, I found a little plastic card and some chewing gum"
Stewart: "noo.. concrete chunks? no steel fragments?"
Joe: "nope"
Stewart: "with all due respect sir, this structure was several hundred meters tall"
Joe: "It's bizarre what survives a catastrophic event.
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To the mods:
WHOOOSH!
Re:It's a hoax, people. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the "hoax" crowd neglects the possibility that Fossett survived the crash and walked towards what he thought was civilization. The Lady Be Good" [qmfound.com] was a US bomber that went down in the desert during World War II. The crew bailed out and some of the survivors walked over a hundred miles in the scorching desert with only a very limited supply of food and water. Perhaps Fossett crash-landed and tried to survive off the land awaiting rescue. He might have became disoriented and left his ID and belongings behind, or even may have sought shelter in some gully and died there.
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Re:It's a hoax, people. (Score:5, Insightful)
One little flaw, they may be highly flammable but they are also highly transportable. If the plane EXPLODED, and if the hikers were where it exploded, sure.
1) depending on the environment the hikers could have walked within 50 yards from the crash site and not seen it.
2) even if he didn't survive, or died away from the crash site, animals could have wandered off with stuff either from the crash site, or from the site where he passed away.
As someone else said a bear might easily be interested in taking a bite out of a leather wallet, or briefcase. It might also rip through a bag cotaining perhaps a sweater, and then strew its contents of anything it wasn't interested in along it path. Contents which might be moved further by weather or other animals...
Re:It's a hoax, people. (Score:5, Interesting)
People in the later stages of hypothermia engage in 'shedding' of clothes. They think they are hot so they start taking off articles of clothing, leaving a trail. This is often how rescuers find bodies, by following the trail of clothing to a frozen stiff. This was how they found the husband of the James Kim family who made a wrong turn in California about a year ago. The family stayed in the car while the husband went on walkabout. They followed the trail of clothing to his frozen corpse.
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He & family was from california, but they got lost in the woods of southern oregon taking a "shortcut" over to the coast from I-5...
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the sweater, once hypothermia starts setting you skin starts to feel like it is burning hot. You'll start pulling off clothing thinking you are burning up when it is just the opposite and you've now accelerated you demise. so it is not odd if he did indeed survive a crash. It could also have been pulled off his body by animals but there would be blood and other damage indicating how it was removed. There's been little info on the sweater.
LoB
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Of course the fact that no one has bothered to look for a crash in the area where the id and possible clothing were found, because everyone focused on an area more than 50 miles away, has no impact on your claim that this is a hoax.
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Why is it insane to think that the plane crashed for any whatever reason, and the guy survived? Wouldn't be the first person to survive a plane crash. It can take awhile to find a plane when you aren't looking in the right place, especially if the plane had a navigation problem and ended up flying off-course.
Also, he could have survived the plane crash and traveled some distance but didn't get too far due to injuries. If he discovered the lake, it would be certainly possible he cleaned up, drank a little, e
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But no body, no 1,000 pounds of steel, no bits of rubber, no airplane seat bits, just a few, highly flammable personal items (clothing, ID) that happens to have the name "Steve Fosset" on it.
Who said it burned first? Maybe it broke apart and then burned. Maybe it didn't burn at all.
Maybe not (Score:2, Insightful)
If the searchers expand their search from the find location, I'll bet they find the crash site.
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Actually the Decathalon is rag and tube. Steel tube fuselage covered in fabric.
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It's more likely the plane is somewhere else. He may have crash-landed, survived but injured, and collapsed and died a mile or more away from the crash site, where he was eaten by the locals in the woods. If it's at the bottom of a lake somewhere, it may be some time before it's found, even if they now have a better idea where to look.
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ever seen a bear drag a body away for a midnight snack? Atleast one article I read on this had some cop or sheriff or something say that many times they don't find bodies because of the large animals in those wilderness areas.
As far as finding the plane goes, it was covered with snow when the plane was lost so it was not going to be very easy to find if it went down in a very wooded area. the best time to look was probably spring before the ground cover bloomed and trees filled out.
I don't find it all that
Re:It's a hoax, people. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody said anything about the findings being burned, partially or otherwise.
Large, bulky items tend to stay right where they were put... Smaller and lighter items get picked up by winds, water (streams, rivers, etc.), etc.
Yes, because the real world is just like the movies... where every crash causes an explosion and a raging inferno, even when the vehicle has run out of gas.
Which is why there are no undiscovered crash sites, since someone always notices the raging inferno... And of course you don't actually find a downed plane, because noting remains after the necessary conflagration...
You are a moron.
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Geez, some people just have an inborn "It's a hoax/conspiracy/plot" reflex, don't they? They've *found* your 1000 pounds of steel, guy.
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well since he was a world record cross-country skier it's not impossible that the items were found a considerable distance from the crash site and his body maybe found quite a ways from the found items as well.
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They did find wreckage nearby where these hikers found these artifacts:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gfmXbQn-RFLHSjd8_s23ytiM6OVAD93I5P5O0 [google.com]
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Re:Is this a plane? (Score:5, Informative)
some more info here
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-fossett2-2008oct02,0,1608495.story [latimes.com]
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In the article, it says certificate, not license.
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Except for this one time...
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you don't know that. what happened could just have easily shown how skilled he was at piloting. Conditions such as a big tree, could have caused a fatal end in an otherwise fantastic recovery and landing. There aren't many places to land up there without hitting something big and hard.
LoB
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There aren't many places to land up there without hitting something big and hard.
True but in a light aircraft you should be able to glide to lower altitude (and flat land) in the event of an engine failure. Of course if the pilot fails the airplane will almost certainly hit the big hard thing.
Now that I think about it, a medical problem is actually a good fit with the facts. The pilot couldn't declare an emergency. The aircraft flew on until it hit a mountain.
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A good pilot, I have been told, is one who is extremely methodical, and follows the procedures he has been trained to do.
I suppose that means to be an amazing pilot, it helps to be a good pilot who can, at times, be a bad pilot. Certainly you see that in business all the time. An amazing businessman has to do things that go against common wisdom from time to time, but ones that do it all the time are just bad at business.
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Lighten up, Sparky. They're the same thing. [wikipedia.org]
If you're that bothered about word choice, why aren't you bothered that the USA decided to use a word which doesn't accurately describe the document's purpose?
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I know several private pilots, just single prop guys though. I'm pretty sure I've heard them all call them licenses at one time or another.
CNN did use the correct terminology, but that's expected of a more formal news site. Given that Slashdot is a lot less formal, I hardly consider this licence/certificate thing to be a problem compared to other editorial issues on this site.
Go talk to the Perlan Project guys. (Score:4, Insightful)
They'll tell you that Fossett was anything but "an amazing pilot". He wasn't exactly a terrible pilot, just nothing better than average, at best. What he did have was a willingness to fund adventures, so long as he was top dog.
His money was greatly appreciated, but the attention-seeking man was merely tolerated. He wasn't hated, but nor was he required, beyond the financial aspect of his participation. But Fossett loved the glory and limelight, so he made it a precondition of funding a venture that he be the public face of it.
Yes, I know this is going to be modded troll and flamebait, but at least I can say that I genuinely "knew" Fossett, and I don't like hearing people such as the OP claiming that Fossett was "an amazing pilot", when the fact is he couldn't have done shit without the help of the other people and pilots he funded.
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I see the same thing in motorcycles, there are really two types, those who ride for a year and those who ride fore
Re:A prank? (Score:5, Informative)
The other card and money are paper. Pilots licenses are made out of plastic. It wouldn't get wrinkled/dirty like a piece of paper.
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As I've said elsewhere in this thread, *my* pilot cert is a piece of paper, printed in a laser printer, in black and white, and I had to cut it out of the middle of a full-size sheet and get it laminated myself. I got my license in 1999 (dec 31, as it so happens) and I bet Steve Fossett had his well before that, so I'm betting his is paper, too, unless he went and got it laminated.
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Many of Fossett's exploits were performed outside of the US, and as I recall the plastic version swiftly became necessary to legally fly in other countries on the basis of a US certificate. That alone would be sufficient reason for him to have one. Other reasons would include adding a new rating, losing the old certificate, or just wanting to keep up with the latest shiny.
In any case, the certificate in that photo is most certainly the plastic kind. (The paper ones don't look anything like that.) You might
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Change of address, maybe?
The date of issue as seen in this photo [turner.com] looks to be 6 JUL 2007, which was about two months before he disappeared.
They sure didn't do a great job of blurring out the certificate number, did they? (Zoom in to read the print.)
Nothing wrong with that card, except... (Score:2)
...it's got a bite taken out of the upper right hand corner.
Other than that, it looks pretty much the same as my private pilot certificate.
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http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/ [adobe.com] ...
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To refuel the plane, perhaps?
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