The Search for Steve Fossett: Why Are They Finding So Many ‘Uncharted Plane Wrecks’?
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 09.12.07 | 11:57 AM ET
It’s been more than a week since adventurer Steve Fossett and his single-engine Bellanca disappeared during a flight from a private airstrip in Western Nevada. Searchers have been looking for him and his plane in a rugged area “twice the size of New Jersey,” according to ABC News, and though they haven’t found either, they have identified at least six “uncharted wrecks” in the Sierra Nevada. Slate’s Explainer wanted to know how so many crashes could go uncharted, and discovered that the area contains many more crash sites that have never been found.
From Slate:
Judging from missing-aircraft reports that were never closed, Nevada’s Civil Air Patrol estimates that there are nearly 200 uncharted crash sites hidden in the treacherous mountain range. That may sound like a lot, but some of the wrecks go back 50 years, before the advent of high-tech search gadgets like the ARCHER imaging system, which can identify targets as small as a motorcycle from 2,500 feet away.
Internet sleuths using Google Earth and other tools have also been helping the search for Fossett. Just this morning, Wired posted a story saying that someone using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk has identified another site with features resembling the fuselage and wings of a small plane.
Related on World Hum:
* Search Under Way for Adventurer Steve Fossett
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
