Steve Fossett, a tycoon turned record-seeker who became the first person to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon, vanished Monday while piloting a single-engine plane over rugged terrain in Nevada, authorities said.
Fossett, 63, has not been seen since taking off from a small airstrip in the western part of the state Monday morning on what was supposed to be a two-hour flight.
By Tuesday evening, more than 10 aircraft were scouring a large chunk of desert for his plane, but officials said they had found no traces of any wreckage. Rescuers had also not picked up any signals from the plane’s radios or emergency location transmitter, officials said.
Authorities said that Fossett had borrowed the plane, a Bellanca Citabria, to scout out locations where he might be able to break the land speed record in a car, one of his next challenges.
Conway said that Fossett had about four hours of fuel aboard the small plane a model designed for aerobatics when he took off from the Flying M Ranch, a private airstrip about 70 miles southeast of Reno owned by Barron Hilton, co-chairman of Hilton Hotels Corp.
Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said that Fossett had not filed a flight plan, making it more difficult to find him. He was not required to file one, and the weather was clear on Monday, Gregor said.
“They’re going to find him on a mountainside,” John Kugler, a longtime friend who taught Fossett ballooning, told the Associated Press. “He’s going to be hungry and want some good food.”
Fossett, a Chicago commodities trader, earned fame in 2002 when he became the first person to fly around the world alone in a balloon. It took him two weeks to make the trip. In the mid-1990s, he flew solo across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon, also breaking a record.
Two years ago, he became the first person to fly solo around the world in an airplane without refueling. Fossett has also climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and competed in the Iditarod dogsled race, the Ironman Triathlon and in the 24 Hours of Le Mans auto race.
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