Science Forums 2

[CraigD]

Welcome to hypography, htawebs!

Originally Posted by htawebs

I posted in my hello that most people haven't taken in account a simple possibility. Maybe, just maybe, Steve suffered a heart attack while flying.
He wasn't in the best shape. Also, there was no S.O.S., no Mayday, no nothing. It has also been speculated that he had a GPS-enabled watch which was never activated.

Definitely a possibility – although Fossett was in pretty good shape for a 62-year-old. He’s done a lot of serious climbing and swimming, including finishing a full triathlon in 1996 in 15:53:10 (compare to a possible winning time of about 12:00, or a world-class winning time of 8:15 or so).

This doesn’t completely resolve the mystery. Live pilot or dead, there ought to be some recognizable wreckage of his Decathlon (for Aviation old-timers, basically an improved Citabria). This is a plane with a stall speed/cruise/max speed of about 60/120/200 MPH, so unlike a small or large jet, not really capable of reducing itself into tiny pieces on impact.

I suspect the true reason the extensive search isn’t finding anything is because the plane is in a strange place - down a narrow crack, under thick tree cover, or underwater. Searchers sonar scanned a lake near the Flying-M Ranch on the hunch that he might have crashed in it shortly after takeoff, but there are many, many lakes, woods, and narrow cracks within range of his flight.

Alas, I agree with htawebs that it’s very likely – though not quite a certain fact – that Fossett is dead.

Another possibility that came to mind when I first heard of his disappearance is that he was kidnapped. He’s very rich, and was out in some very remote country. Forcing down a light aircraft to kidnap its pilot doesn’t seem a particularly far-fetched plan. Of course, since the purpose of a rational kidnapping is to demand a ransom, and no such demand has been made, if such an attempt was made, it must have been unsuccessful. If Fossett was killed in such an attempt, it seems reasonable that those responsible might have disposed of any wreckage in a manner that even the most thorough ordinary search will never reveal.

It’s possible that Fossett has been kidnapped and a ransom demand made, but those to whom it was made are not making it public, but given the risk being incurred by those continuing the search (mainly the CAP), I doubt this would be allowed.