[Popman]

The search for Fossett has covered some 17,000-square-miles of the Sierra Nevada and has revealed the wreckage of eight other small planes that had never, until now, been discovered.

Ryan figures more than 100 planes have disappeared in the past 50 years in the state's mountain ranges,

Wow, I always have assumed that most missing planes and their pilots are found. Just shows you have hard it is to find things when not in plain sight

...and the democrats bitch we can't find OBL

[BerryDingle]

“None of the crash sights have been properly investigated apart from to confirm that it is not Fossett’s.”

Fascinating.

[alfa6]

Ping a Ling

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[Sir_Ed]

One of my Mom’s cousins was lost in a plane crash near Mt. Shasta forty years ago, and they found the wreckage some 30 years later...

Ed

[VOA]

Wow, I always have assumed that most missing planes and their
pilots are found.

I'm not an aviator or crash-site analyst.

But I suspect that in rough areas like our Western mountain states,
there are a fair number of uncharted (actually, I mean un-discovered)
crash sites.

A plane crashes into the side of a mountain which itself is buried in snow,
or noses in at great speed, such that maybe even the wings separate
from the body before impact,
or it just disappears under an rarely-visited mountain lake or river...

In the old days before lots of communication and sparser population,
and no GPS...not surprising a fair number go missing.

IIRC, the father of Good Morning, America hostes Joan Lunden's
father went out in his private plane one day...and vanished.

If it could happen to Joan Lunden's father, or Mr. Fossett...
it could happen to a lot of flyers.