Fossett plane found

[classicman]

Fossett plane found, sheriff says

(CNN) -- Authorities have found the plane Steve Fossett was flying when he disappeared last year, but they have not found the millionaire adventurer's body, the Madera County, California, sheriff said Thursday. "They did locate an aircraft which we have now confirmed is the one Steve Fossett was flying when it disappeared last Labor Day," Madera County Sheriff John Anderson told reporters at a news conference in Mammoth Lakes.

The single-engine Bellanca appeared to have crashed head-on into the side of a mountain in the Sierra Nevada, and the damage was "so severe I doubt someone would've walked away from it," he said. The engine was about 300 feet higher on the mountain than the fuselage and the wings, Anderson said.

Fossett was last seen the morning of September 3, 2007, when he took off from the Flying-M Ranch outside Minden, Nevada, on what he said would be a pleasure flight over the Sierra Nevada.

He was carrying a bottle of water and had no parachute.

Investigators homed in on the area near Mammoth Lakes on Wednesday after hikers there found a sweat shirt, cash and identification cards with Fossett's name.

The hikers did not find any wreckage; an aerial search discovered the airplane parts about a quarter-mile away, Anderson said.

Ground crews confirmed Wednesday night that the wreckage was Fossett's plane. The sheriff said authorities were not certain if the cash and sweat shirt belonged to Fossett.
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A National Transportation Safety Board team arrived Thursday to investigate the crash. The NTSB said the wreckage had been discovered around an altitude of 10,000 feet in the Sierra Nevada near Mammoth Lakes.

The photographs the NTSB team has seen indicate "a high-impact crash which appears to be consistent with a nonsurvivable accident," acting NTSB chairman Mark Rosenker told reporters.