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missing jet and pilots found by hikers...

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FN FAL

Freight Dawgs Rule
Joined
Dec 17, 2003
Posts
8,573
looks another Albatross went in and was missing for a while...

Hikers Find Crashed Airplane, Remains

Aircraft Missing Since October

LAKE KACHESS, Wash. -- The wreckage of a small jet, missing since October, has been found in the Cascade mountains west of Lake Kachess.
Kittitas County Undersheriff Clay Myers says pieces of the 40-foot-long aircraft were discovered recently by hikers in a heavily wooded area.

The Czechoslovakian-made L-39 training jet disappeared after the pilot reported an apparent mechanical problem as the aircraft was flying from Seattle's Boeing Field to Idaho. The pilot was identified as 45-year-old Rocky Stewart of Hollister, Calif., and 46-year-old Scott Smith, of San Francisco.

The search for them had been called off about a week after the jet vanished.

Myers says some remains and personal effects were found at the wreckage site.
 
eeew, i bet that was a pleasant surprise when they looked inside. do you think the bodies had reached the skeletal stage yet? i bet the hikers will be seeing that in their nightmares for a while...
 
cforst513 said:
eeew, i bet that was a pleasant surprise when they looked inside. do you think the bodies had reached the skeletal stage yet? i bet the hikers will be seeing that in their nightmares for a while...


Why dont you show some friggin respect for your fellow pilots, this post is far beyond bad taste.
 
just stating the obvious, that's all. you cannot tell me that something like that has never popped up in your mind at some point. it's like the car wreck that you know you shouldn't gawk at when you see sheets over bodies yet you still stare as you cruise by at 5 mph. one would only think that if this plane crashed all the way back in October that there wouldn't be much left. also, it begs the question of why they didn't resume a search? it said they gave up a search a week after the crash. ok, i can understand that. october up in the mountains, the weather could put the rescuers/recovery teams at risk. but hey, it's summer! the weather is much nicer. i just wonder if anyone was still looking for them or the hikers found them by chance. no disrespect meant. i totally feel for the families, not knowing anything or having closure for almost 9 months, it must have been hell. it's just the macabre side of me couldn't help but wonder about the bodies, that's all.
 
If I was the guys son, I'd be looking all over the place for him. Who loses a plane in the continental US overland, and stops looking.
 
cforst513 said:
eeew, i bet that was a pleasant surprise when they looked inside. do you think the bodies had reached the skeletal stage yet? i bet the hikers will be seeing that in their nightmares for a while...

I actually have a little bit of personal experience with such an event... Around mid-November 2003 I was doing some hiking just west of Denver below I-70. I came across a Ford Explorer that had rolled repeatedly down the embankment and ended up upside down in the ravine below. It was so smashed up that at first I thought it was a compact car. Then I noticed the 4wd differentials and saw the Explorer badging on the rear. I was sitting there contemplating how the rescue officials got the person out of the car, when I noticed a hand sticking out of the window, laying on the ground. Oddly enough, the fingernails were extremely long. In fact, at first I thought it was a female. The only smell was oil and gas, and there was evidence of mummification. Mostly a factor of Colorado's dry, cool climate (at that time of year anyway).

Anyway, it was pretty crazy, but I didn't have nightmares about it. I felt really bad for the guy's family though, and I was amazed that such a thing could happen so close to a major city (an undiscovered accident). You can imagine how akward the phone call was to the police. In fact, the dispatcher I talked to was outright confrontational with me! But the Colorado State Patrol was great about it, offered emotional counseling if I needed it, etc. Coincidentally enough I'd just left an engineering job doing accident investigation, so I'd already seen a lot of pictures of that sort of thing. I guess that's why it never messed me up or gave me nightmares.

The weirdest part was that the DOT had recently replaced a section of guard rail where the guy went off the highway. Not sure why they didn't take a peek down the hill at the time!
 

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