Hunt for Fossett grinds to a halt: police
LOS ANGELES (AFP) — The hunt for missing aviator Steve Fossett has ground to a virtual standstill, police said Monday, two weeks after the adventurer's plane vanished over the Nevada wilderness.
Nevada State police spokesman Chuck Allen told AFP the search for Fossett had been dramatically scaled back with only two grounded aircraft on standby and "four or five" military helicopters now deployed in the hunt.
At one stage during the search for 63-year-old Fossett -- who has not been heard from since taking off from a private airstrip in Nevada on September 6 -- around 45 aircraft were patrolling the area.
However Allen said the Civil Air Patrol had wound down their operations after completing their searches of an estimated 20,000 square miles (52,000 square kilometers) of rugged mountain terrain.
"The Civil Air Patrol feel that they have completed their search of 98 percent of the ground that needed to be covered," Allen told AFP.........
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