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Airbus Group chief executive Tom Enders took the controls of the two-seat Perlan II glider during a 10min test flight on 7 May from the windswept, high-desert airport in Minden, Nevada, raising the public profile of a volunteer team of aviation adventurers hoping to make history in about four months. Afterwards, Enders – a licensed helicopter pilot and skydiving enthusiast – pronounced the Airbus-sponsored composite vehicle ready to achieve the Perlan team’s goal of shattering the winged altitude record of 85,069ft set by the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird in 1976, using a unique and barely understood weather phenomenon instead of afterburning...

Adventurer Steve Fossett 'may have faked his own death' Round-the-world flying adventurer Steve Fossett may have faked his own death, investigators have claimed. By Chris Irvine Last Updated: 12:22PM BST 27 Jul 2008 Fossett, a friend of Virgin boss Richard Branson, and the first man to fly non-stop round the earth in a hot air balloon, went missing last September when his final flight in a light plane over the Nevada desert went missing. However, Lieutenant Colonel Cynthia Ryan of the US Civil Air Patrol has said Fossett, whose body or plane was never found, could still be alive. She...

According to the tracking page at the Global Flyer webpage (link above), Steve Fossett has made it across the Atlantic, and is currently over southwestern Ireland. He will be landing at Kent International Airport in England in 2-3 hours.

MADERA, Calif. - Authorities said Monday they have positively identified some of Steve Fossett's remains: two large bones found a half-mile from where the adventurer's plane crashed in California's Sierra Nevada. Madera County Sheriff John Anderson said DNA tests conducted by the state Department of Justice positively identified the bones as the remains of the millionaire aviator who disappeared last year.

MADERA, Calif. (AP) - Searchers have found what appear to be two large human bones near the crash site of Steve Fossett's plane in California's Sierra Nevada, along with the adventurer's tennis shoes and driver's license, authorities said Thursday. Madera County Sheriff John Anderson said at a news conference that the bones were found Wednesday about a half-mile east of the crash site. Investigators have sent them to a Department of Justice testing lab and should know in about a week whether they are Fossett's. Anderson said searchers also found Fossett's tennis shoes, his Illinois driver's license and credit cards....

Madera County officials announced Thursday that searchers found bones, a pair of tennis shoes, credit cards and Steve Fossett's Illinois state driver's license about half a mile east of a rugged spot where the millionaire's plane was discovered earlier this fall. The skeletal remains, which are believed to be human, were sent to a state crime lab in Richmond, Calif., for DNA testing, said Madera County Sheriff John Anderson. Officials hope to receive the results by early next week.

Summary of press conference by Mammoth Lakes Sheriff: Aircraft crash site found near Mammoth Lakes, CA. NTSB Confirms that the N number of the aircraft matches the missing adventurer's plane. Wreckage found about 1/4 mile from the location where Fossett's ID and other items where found. No remains were found in the aircraft. The aircraft appeared to a flown into the side of a hill.

Federal investigators say they found body parts amid the wreckage of missing adventurer Steve Fossett's airplane in the mountains of eastern California.The National Transportation Safety Board, or NTSB, said Thursday that searchers found enough at the crash site of Fossett's plane to provide coroners with DNA. National Transportation Safety Board acting Chairman Mark Rosenker won't say exactly what searchers found. But he says it was not surprising how little they uncovered, considering how long it had been since the crash. Madera County Sheriff John Anderson told reporters earlier Thursday that searchers "found enough wreckage to determine that it was in...

Per Sheppard Smith

MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. — Search teams combing a rugged part of eastern California for any sign of Steve Fossett, the adventurer who vanished on a solo flight more than a year ago, have spotted what appeared to be wreckage Wednesday, authorities said. Erica Stuart, spokeswoman for the Madera County Sheriff's Office, would not reveal the exact location of the reported aerial sighting, which she said was called in around sunset. Searchers had been combing a 10-mile radius around the spot where a hiker had found what appeared to be a pilot's license and other items belonging to Fossett earlier in...

A hiker came across the papers in the backcountry near Mammoth Mountain, according to the Madera County Sheriff's Department. The adventurer vanished in September 2007. A hiker in the Sierra Nevada backcountry today found identification documents believed to be those of missing adventurer Steve Fossett, officials said. The ID cards were found by hiker Preston Morrow off a trail near the town of Mammoth Lakes earlier this week and were turned in to local police. The items reportedly carried the name of James Steven Fossett and the same date of birth as the adventurer, who vanished in September 2007 after...

Items belonging to Steve Fossett, an aviator who's been missing for over a year, have been found by a California couple in the woods. The couple was hiking in Mammoth Lakes, California, when they found FAA ID cards belonging to Steve Fossett - and police are saying the cards are not forged. A search of the area has not turned up any further evidence of the pilot. Steve Fossett, the commodities trader turned record-breaking aviator, was declared legally dead in February of this years, five months after he vanished while flying in Nevada.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hikers in northern California have found clothing and personal items possibly belonging to millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett, who went missing a year ago, CNN reported on Wednesday. Mammoth Lakes Police Chief Randy Schienle told CNN that a sweatshirt and other identification possibly with Fossett's name on it had been found by hikers in the area.

How could this iconic aviator plummet from the sky without a trace? How could one of the largest and most intensive searches in modern history fail to yield results? The answer, experts say, is that a plane wreck is one of the hardest needles to find in a rugged haystack -- especially the Sierra... Even experienced "wreckchasers" -- a growing group of hobbyists -- can be thwarted while hunting for an already documented site... The Air Force Rescue Coordination Center in Tyndall, Fla., has mapped nearly 180 crashes within the mountain range -- mainly so searchers can distinguish older wrecks...

CHICAGO - Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett, who risked his life seeking to set records in high-tech balloons, gliders and jets, was declared dead Friday, 5 months after he vanished while flying in an ordinary small plane. ADVERTISEMENT The self-made business tycoon, who in 2002 became the first person to circle the world solo in a balloon, was last seen Sept. 3 after taking off in a single-engine plane from an airstrip near Yerington, Nev., heading toward Bishop, Calif. He was 63. His wife, Peggy V. Fossett, had him declared legally dead in Cook County Circuit Court as a step toward...

The wife of missing adventurer Steve Fossett has filed a petition for her husband to be declared legally dead, some three months after the 63-year-old disappeared without trace in the Nevada desert. Despite a huge search operation mounted following Fosset's evidently ill-fated 3 September flight from Barron Hilton's Flying M Ranch, roughly 70 miles southeast of Reno, neither he nor the remains of his Bellanca Citabria Super Decathalon have been found. Mary Downie, one of Mrs Fossett's lawyers, told the Chicago Tribune: "Although an ongoing recovery mission continues, all involved have accepted the inevitable conclusion that Mr Fossett did not...

CARSON CITY, Nev. - Relying on new leads from Air Force experts, crews looking for famed aviator Steve Fossett plan to comb a rugged area near Death Valley by air and foot, authorities said Tuesday. Gary Derks, the state Department of Public Safety official in charge of the search, said the Air Force analyzed images picked up by radar and satellite and "picked up what could be Mr. Fossett, his track." "It gives us an idea, if it's him, what direction he was going," Derks said of the wealthy adventurer, missing for more than three weeks. Derks said the area...

The high-tech hunt for a missing adventurer AS The Economist went to press, Steve Fossett, a famed and fearless aviator who went missing over the Nevada desert on September 3rd, had not been found. But it was not for want of trying. Mr Fossett has been the subject of one of the most intensive civilian manhunts in history—and also, fittingly, one of the most technological. Besides the usual panoply of search-and-rescue aircraft deployed by America's Civil Air Patrol, which wound down its search on September 17th, a different sort of search effort is being conducted online, using satellite photographs. These...

Record-setting aviators Dick Rutan and Steve Fossett are forever linked in the record books as holders of historic nonstop around-the-world flights. Last week, Rutan joined in the exhaustive - but so far unsuccessful - search for his one-time competitor. Fossett went missing Sept. 3, when he took off in a single-engine airplane from a private airstrip at the Flying M Ranch, about 80 miles southeast of Reno. The massive search effort ... entered a second week Monday without finding any sign of the experienced pilot and survivalist. Rutan spent 3½ days flying search missions over the rugged Nevada terrain, returning...

Google, Paris Hilton, Ebay, Britney Spears, Internet Marketing Used To Find Steve Fossett By Joel Leyden Israel News Agency Jerusalem ---- September 9, 2007 ...... On September 3, 2007, adventurer Steve Fossett, 63, the first person to fly a plane around the world without refueling in 2006, the first person to fly around the world in a hot-air balloon in 2002 went missing in Nevada. Fosset took off on a solo flight from a private airstrip 80 miles (130 kilometers) southeast of Reno, Nevada. The Bellanca single engine aircraft he was flying failed to return. No one has any idea...