i have watched plenty GE maps of the area and a few hundreds mechanical turk images.
personally, i think the chances to find Mr. Fossett alive are now very small.
i am a pilot and i have many colleagues who have been in crash landings.
the reasons why an airplane goes down are not many
- pilot incapacitation: rare event, and considering Mr.Fossett fitness, quite unlikely, but in the case, lethal. i wouldnt expect to be easy to spot a wreck impacting at high speed/ high angles with terrain. however in such desert area any sort of wreckage would be quite easy to see. - structural failure: usually lethal, but a very rare event. see above for spotting the wreck - engine failure: this leads to a crash landing. however, the super decathlon stalls at 53mph therefore is quite easy, for a pilot like Mr.Fossett, to crash land even on harsh terrain without destroying the airplane. last sunday i was flying over italian mountains and a colleague happened to crash land in the same area in a river bed. only landing gear damage. i would expect the super decathlon also to stay upright and not capsize, being it a taildragger. in such case, one of the two ELT would have been activated. i would have expected Mr. Fossett to manually activate the ELT in case of engine failure. ELT's dont work under water.. - bad weather: would not expect Mr.Fossett to end up accidentally in weather liable to be dangerous for flying..
unfortunately the color scheme of that specific airplane is not the best for spotting from the air.
all this is very baffling. unless Mr Fossett is not where they are searching, i am very surprised nothing has been found yet.
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