State, federal searchers decide to end hunt for missing pilot
MINDEN — State and federal search and rescue workers said Wednesday that they have ended their search for adventurer Steve Fossett, who has been missing since he took off from Barron Hilton’s ranch near Yerington on Sept. 3.
The Civil Air Patrol and the Nevada National Guard no longer will look for Fossett and his plane unless they receive tips with new information on his whereabouts.
But pilots hired by Hilton and Fossett’s wife, Peggy, will continue the search for the millionaire, last seen on Labor Day morning as he took off in a single-engine aircraft on what was supposed to be a two- to three-hour flight.
"We can’t go on flying aimlessly over areas we have flown over before," CAP Maj. Cynthia Ryan said. "There is not much more you can do unless new information comes in."
CAP planes and National Guard helicopters have flown five to six times over a 20,000- square-mile area in western Nevada and eastern California, she said. The search has concentrated on areas within a 50-mile radius of Hilton’s Flying M Ranch.
Searchers continue to receive tips, many from people looking at satellite photos on the Google Earth Web site, but they often are tips that searchers already have received and checked out.
Too often people report they have seen an intact aircraft, said Maj. Ed Locke of the Nevada National Guard.
But a small plane that has crashed and burned probably would leave only a "debris field" and could not be detected easily, he said.
Ryan refused to say they have abandoned the search completely. She said CAP and National Guard pilots will be prepared to fly and check out new and promising leads immediately.
"We are not giving up," she said. "We are scaling back."
The search command center will be transferred from the Minden-Tahoe Airport in Douglas County to the state Division of Emergency Management’s Operations Center in Carson City.
The Nevada National Guard search has cost the state $616,000 as of Monday.
CAP costs are paid by the federal government. But the CAP pilots and crews are volunteers who take time off from their regular jobs to search for missing aircraft.
Nevada Highway Patrol trooper Chuck Allen expressed hope that Fossett still will be found alive but admitted the time has come for the major search to end.
"Nevada has been searched as closely as it can be," he said.
Only one other aircraft is known to be missing in Nevada since 1982, but Ryan noted that people still have not found D.B. Cooper, a hijacker who jumped out of a Boeing 727 after receiving a $200,000 ransom in 1971. She said Fossett’s disappearance could join famous missing-person stories.
"Amelia Earhart is still a story," Ryan said of the renowned pilot whose aircraft was reported missing over the Pacific Ocean in 1937.
Tips can be reported to the Division of Emergency Management’s Operations Center at 775-687-0335. The center can be reached by e-mail at FossettSearch@EOC.NV.Gov.