16 February 2008
Barring some extraordinary potential twist, the story of Steve Fossett appears to have come to a close. The explorer and aviator extraordinaire, who went missing on a flight in September last year, has been declared dead by a judge in Chicago.
Fossett <a href=’http://www.flyer.co.uk/news/newsfeed.php?artnum=642′ target=’_blank’>disappeared</a> after taking off from a small strip in Nevada on 3 September; despite an intense search (later <a href=’http://www.flyer.co.uk/news/newsfeed.php?artnum=645′ target=’_blank’>scaled down</a>) involving light aircraft volunteers and even a pixel-by-pixel investigation of Google Earth imagery no trace of him or his aircraft has ever been found.
The judge declared that there was ‘more than sufficient’ evidence that Fossett was dead, and revealed that the explorer’s ‘vast’ fortune amounted to an ‘eight figure sum’. Fossett’s wife had filed the petition to have him declared dead.
