Fossett's plight

[phantomphixer]

To all;
I'm not trying to sound cold hearted, just stirring up a little discussion. If I crash my 170B in the desert and Civil Air Patrol and god only knows who else is looking for me, including DOD, will they still look for me after 1 week and will the taxpayers fund this kind of search for little ole Paul? Seems to me when Kennedy bought it off Martha's Vinyard, the US Navy spent a few dollars and time looking for him. Is Fossett's family footing the bill? Just thought I'd see how the rest of you feel. Don't shoot the messenger but I'm not the only person who's asking these questions. I hope they still find him alive but after living in the desert for 31 years, a week is a long time to be lost in that enviroment.

[Iceman07]

Though I agree with you in principle, the reality is that the rich and famous are not reated the same as the rest of us.

Is it right? No. But it is the truth.

The only reason you, or anyone else is questioning this is because though Fossett is rich, and sort of famous, nost people in the US really wouldn't have known who he was before his disappearance.

I would bet that if he was some famous celeberty, no one would be questioning the money/time/resources spent on the search.

You just have to look at how much money and effort has been spent over the last 75 years on the search for AE.

[flyguy]

Maybe most of our members file flight plans for long cross country flights. I have become lax about that in the last ten years or so with the reduction of FSS services and flying fewer cross-country flights. During the last two years of employment at TWA in KC, I flew our 170 from KC to Louisiana and back, almost every weekend. I would call Home just before departure and if I made a pit stop, I would call from there giving an ETA to Deana. Two reasons for that - one was to let her know abut what time to drive the car onto the airstrip for lights and the other just in case I went down some where. Certainly not fool-proof but some reasonable ideas where I might be found. I always had good batteries in my ELT and it had a portable com feature that could be used for putting out a may-day or talking to searchers.

Query: What happened to the ELT on this plane that Steve was flying? My guess - - He soft landed in that big old lake and it didn't activate.

Here is a scenario that could possibly be the fall out from this very expensive search. There will be a NPRM that will be to allow the Big Brother Gov (FAA) to mandate filed flight plans for any trip more than 5 miles from home base. I hope not - but lets not suggest that out loud or some Fed will hear it and shout "Let's make another law for those pesky little planes"!

BTW - I was in the Civil Air Patrol for many years and we never asked how much money the lost pilot had or what his portfolio was worth. "Plane Missing" was all we needed to scramble to the airport and give it our best shot.

Same here on Toledo Bend. When the alert goes out - -"Boaters in trouble" we pull out all the stops to, hopefully, rescue those in trouble. Sometimes it isn't a rescue but a body recovery. That isn't any fun but we do it for the families. When the incident turns out good and we find people alive it is a real "rush" and we give each other "high-fives" for the sucesses.

I feel time has run out for Steve Fossett. If fate has been unkind and he died doing something he loved, cest-la-vie. He will be missed. A great Aviator IMHO.

[Jr.CubBuilder]

To all;
I'm not trying to sound cold hearted, just stirring up a little discussion. If I crash my 170B in the desert and Civil Air Patrol and god only knows who else is looking for me, including DOD, will they still look for me after 1 week and will the taxpayers fund this kind of search for little ole Paul? Seems to me when Kennedy bought it off Martha's Vinyard, the US Navy spent a few dollars and time looking for him. Is Fossett's family footing the bill? Just thought I'd see how the rest of you feel. Don't shoot the messenger but I'm not the only person who's asking these questions. I hope they still find him alive but after living in the desert for 31 years, a week is a long time to be lost in that enviroment.

There have been some fairly large searchs around here for lost planes and people, but no media attention because there was no fame involved to spice up the story. Will they look that hard for you or me.........that remains (I hope forever) to be seen, but I feel fairly certain that the media would not be hyping my dissapearance. Consequently no one would know, there would be no public interest pressuring politicians to pressure S&R to raise the bar in my case. No one in a public position is going to suggest calling off a search while the cameras are rolling without overwhelming pressure. The search and rescue folks I've met love doing what they do and they'll keep looking as long as they can.

I hope Fossett makes it, but the older we get the more unhappy endings we see in situations like this, the less inclined some of us are to be optomistic.

[jrenwick]

....Here is a scenario that could possibly be the fall out from this very expensive search. There will be a NPRM that will be to allow the Big Brother Gov (FAA) to mandate filed flight plans for any trip more than 5 miles from home base. I hope not - but lets not suggest that out loud or some Fed will hear it and shout "Let's make another law for those pesky little planes"!

The FAA at least has a rule-making process that is responsive to input from the aviation community. The real danger is Congress deciding that something has to be done, as happened in the late '60s with ELTs after a couple of high profile and gut-wrenchingly tragic losses. (See http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/aviation/SAR/ELT_History.htm for the details on how this came about.) The fix was "easy," but in a couple of important ways it didn't scale up to the whole fleet.

I'm not going to complain about the effort being put in to find Fossett. I'm sure much of it is being done by his friends, at private expense. Remember the efforts to find lost mountaineers in Oregon last year? (Or was it last Spring?) They were ordinary folks, weren't they?

I don't think I've ever seen any real statistics to prove that a person's wealth or standing determines the extent of a search effort. Much more important might be whether the media get excited about it, and wealth or fame or the victim's cuteness or good looks can certainly contribute to that.

John

[MoonlightVFR]

Wouldn't it be something if a taildragger pilot makes the discovery?


I heard today that any person w a computer can join the analysis of satilite photos of the Nevada desert


There is a lot of unrecognized observational talent among our group. AS you already know the power of discerment is sharpened by observation ffrom the air.


Here in Missouri a cabin class cessna twin disappeared in SE Mo flat lands
Early 1970's Storm - Never found.


regards

[Robert Eilers]

I would like to know the story behind the crash sites that were never located before this search for Fosset. I understand the CAP is marking them and further research will be done later - but, you've got to wonder.

[hilltop170]

I've been a C.A.P. search and rescue pilot since 1973. In that time I have participated in more than a few searches for regular folks that went on for two and three weeks.

One that comes to mind is a three week search for a C-182 with four adults on board that disappeared on a flightseeing trip around Mt. McKinley several years ago. They were never found. It was surmised they hit a glacier and it covered them up. Maybe they will be found someday.

Another one was a twin Cessna with four or five folks on board flying from Anchorage that did not make its destination. Three weeks searching and they were never found.

Nobody knew these people and it didn't matter. The Guard sent Blackhawks and C-130s. The Troopers sent their helicopters. We flew C.A.P. aircraft daily.

Famous people happen to attract the media and sometimes families hire search crews of their own. The search goes on no matter who the lost folks are.

The circumstances of each search determine the length of time and resources employed by the various agencies.

Most missing planes are located in the first few days, ELTs are sometimes found in minutes, but with no ELT or flight plan it's literally the needle in the haystack.

Crashes don't often look like airplanes and are hard to recognize. They more often look like scrap piles, burn pits, or scattered debris. Open desert country is fairly easy to search but forests and steep mountains make it impossible to see the crash site sometimes. The C.A.P. has a new system that can look down through trees and see differences or contrasts with the surrounding area and can help identify unusual looking areas. I'm sure they are using that system.

It's not unusual to spot old crash sites again that have already been previously located. Records are kept on their locations so when they are spotted again they can be quickly identified. Every once in awhile an old crash site will be found for the first time. A Goose was found a few years ago in the Brooks Range that crashed in the 1950s and never found during the search back then.

I hope Steve's ok and hanging out in somebody's cabin with a good bottle of Scotch waiting to be picked up.

[bsdunek]

Here is a scenario that could possibly be the fall out from this very expensive search. There will be a NPRM that will be to allow the Big Brother Gov (FAA) to mandate filed flight plans for any trip more than 5 miles from home base. I hope not - but lets not suggest that out loud or some Fed will hear it and shout "Let's make another law for those pesky little planes"!

.

If you fly in Canada, you know what an annoyance this is. If you fly more than 25 miles from your departure airport you have to file. In the far North it may be a good idea, but in the Southern area I can't see the need.

Just IMHO.

[c170b53]

True > 25 miles, but seldom done in populated areas. A plane was lost for 5 years in a suburb of Vancouver (crashed nose in, into a bunch of trees). The search was called off as it was thought the plane had crashed into water after it wasn't found right away. It was located when a small farm was converted into a sub-division.

[N171TD]

If anyone thinks it doesn't matter who you are when it comes to time and money used for a search you are fooling yourself. I know how upset many of us in Alaska were when the Begich/Boggs search was so much bigger than any search for the common guy. The Feds even used the SR71 for the search. Thinks the feds will use there latest secret plane for you I THINK NOT!

[russfarris]

Even more incredible was the Trans-Canada Airlines Lockheed Lodestar
that vanished on approach into Vancouver April 28, 1947 with 15 passengers and crew. It was finally found on the east slope of Mt. Elsay
only 10 miles north of Vancouver, on September 27, 1994 - an amazing 47 years later, which has to be some kind of record, especially for a commercial airliner. Russ Farris

[dacker]

Searching for a downed airplane can be elusive... while I was station SAR at NAS Patuxent River I once had to assist with a search for a missing twin out of Lexington Park. We had no luck with the assigned search area. Approximately three months later it was found something like a mile or so from the departure end of the runway in a stand of trees. It was reported that the guy took off in the middle of the night with his girlfriend after drinking.
David

[hilltop170]

If anyone thinks it doesn't matter who you are when it comes to time and money used for a search you are fooling yourself. I know how upset many of us in Alaska were when the Begich/Boggs search was so much bigger than any search for the common guy. The Feds even used the SR71 for the search. Thinks the feds will use there latest secret plane for you I THINK NOT!

Jim- You are right about that, but it is all relative. Take drunks, for instance. If a homeless drunk goes missing on 4th Ave. in Anchorage not much is going to happen. If Ted Kennedy goes missing under a bridge in Chappaquiddick, all the stops are going to be pulled out to find him. We, as in everyday folks, are somewhere in between. Maybe not right but that's the way it is. Politics is more powerful than just about any other force.

But that's not the point I was trying to get across. What I was trying to say was it doesn't matter who the missing are to start with. It sure doesn't to the Search and Rescue people who are out there maybe risking their own lives trying to find them. The search is initiated and continued until the target is found or until such time as it is deemed unproductive to continue and the missing are presumed gone. That is not an easy decision for anyone to make and I'm sure big bucks and being famous influence and prolong the decision to stop. That's life. Anyone would continue a search for someone we know if we had the funds to do it. I sure don't hold it against anyone who does it.

The feds do use their latest equipment ie, satellites to track ELTs if there is a signal. The latest 406mhz versions will identify the aircraft, who owns it, and who to call for notification. Where do you suppose those Google Earth pictures come from?

[Robert Eilers]

I have had the opportunity over the past thirty years to manage a number of high profile searches. High profile searches attract a certain type of individual. Individuals who are more interested in being able to say they were part of the search and the small scale celebrity associated with it than actually helping in any relevant way. We also deal with entreprenuers who have developed equipment and are interested in being able to say it was used in the search. We and other organizations responsible for managing searches have had to create processes that screen out the "wannabes" and make good use out of those who actually can contribute in a positive way. I am still amazed at what comes out of the woodwork during a high profile search.