Missing and declared unlikely to land
Perhaps if the lost pilot had been found, the story wouldn’t have even made much more than the back pages of the local newspaper. Instead, when Steve Fossett and his airplane didn’t arrive at the destination, the story “took wings”. After all, here was an experienced navigator with boats and planes; if there’d been a locomotive handy, he’d have driven it too. He’d gone around the world non-stop. This time, the plane didn’t arrive at the airstrip.
I think what really set this story apart was the search tools. For the first time, Google was actually used to try and find somebody. Special map pages were set up with higher resolution photographs and the rest of the world was invited to search.
I tried, but didn’t find anything other than trees and rocks. Still, the web took a higher moral tone for a short while. We now accept that we can search for things other than our own name and the latest gaffs from the Hollywood crowd. Maybe this web thing will be useful, some day.
He has been declared officially dead. Almost 24 weeks ago, the search began; today, the court ended all legal hope. In some ways, it’s better than a “waiting for Godot” scenario. After all, Ms. Earhart required 18 months before that search ended; some are still expecting to find her sipping a Mai Tai under a palm tree.
I want to mention that he flew planes designed by Burt Rutan. A buddy has one of those, albeit still not completely hatched from its egg.
Another odd language story out of Montreal: the OLF (Office de la Langue Française) have decided to legally pursue an Irish theme pub in the downtown area for unilingual Guinness signs. As if that’s going to save the culture. Time to get some signs that are bilingual (Irish and English)
