The civil aviation patrol has stopped flights to search for billionaire and traveler Steve Fossett, who disappeared in early September, but rescuers do not give up hope of finding him, Cynthia Ryan, a spokesman for the national Civil Patrol, told RIA Novosti
“We still view the operation as a search and rescue operation, not just a search one. The decrease in the number of forces and means involved in the search is due to the fact that almost the entire territory where Steve Fossett could be has already been surveyed. Currently, two planes have been allocated from the Civil Patrol - they are at the airfield and are ready to take off at any time, but there are no flights yet,”Ryan said.
According to her, 98% of the territory where Fossett may be has already been surveyed, the remaining 2% is a hard-to-reach area, where he could hardly be.
“We searched practically everything several times, just a mysterious disappearance,” Ryan said. The area of the search and rescue operation is 26 thousand square kilometers.
According to her, on Wednesday at 10.00 local time a meeting of the leadership of the search and rescue operation will be held on further actions.
Answering the question whether the question of continuing the rescue operation or its termination will be decided at the meeting, Ryan replied that she could not discuss this topic ahead of time.
"Until we have any new leads, we still do not know where Steve Fossett and his plane may be, but we continue the search and rescue operation," said the agency's source.
At the same time, she clarified that by now all means for finding Fossett have been practically exhausted.
“The police on several occasions interviewed people who, on the day of Fossett's flight, allegedly saw or heard something that could lead us on the trail. Helicopters were sent to the places people talked about, but the result was zero,”Ryan said.
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As Chuck Allan, a spokesman for the Nevada Department of Public Safety, told RIA Novosti, six police helicopters and five helicopters from the National Guard are currently involved in an active search and rescue operation.
“We still view our actions as a rescue operation,” Allan said.
According to him, the leadership of the search and rescue operation may issue a statement to the press on Wednesday, around noon, after the meeting.
Steve Fossett took off from a private airfield in Nevada on September 3 and, according to his friends, planned to spend several hours in the air. According to some reports, Fossett intended to find a convenient place in the Nevada desert to set a new speed record by car, according to others, he simply decided to fly for pleasure.
The alarm was raised only a few hours after Fossett was supposed to return to the airfield. No one imagined that something could happen to an experienced pilot like Steve Fossett.
While Fossett was being searched from the air, the police were working on "ground" versions, including the most incredible ones. According to one of these versions, Fossett deliberately decided to "disappear" for personal or financial reasons. This version has not been confirmed.
The disappearance of Steve Fossett still remains a mystery, although it allowed to reveal several secrets of the past: during the search for the famous traveler, the accident sites of several aircraft were discovered, the location of which was not previously known.
Fossett has set over 100 records in various fields, but his main passion is aeronautics. He set the record for a single, non-stop, non-stop flight in 2005. A year later, he again set off on a dangerous journey, covering more than 41 thousand kilometers in 76 hours.
In 2002, Fossett made the first solo round-the-world balloon flight - then in 14 days he covered more than 33 thousand kilometers.