Its bewildering why Fossett thought that he could undertake such flight without the assistance of his retinue of paid experts who would normally do all his flight planning and navigation
Please explain. This bloke had some 6k+ hours. Maybe many not in pistons?
The radar track reached 14900ft and there is no mention that he used oxygen.
If he did not, a loss of consciousness is quite possible.
With a climb rate of 300ft/min, the climb from 12000ft to 14900ft would have brought him over the legal limit for nearly 10 minutes.
Yes, FAA-illegal perhaps but not a risk re consciousness unless he had a medical issue.
It does appear that he was flying pretty close to the actual aircraft ceiling, so would have been going fairly close to Vs and it would not have taken much of a downdraught to bring him back down. However, in that situation and faced with celarly visible obstacles one would have turned around. The wreckage was of a very high speed flight straight into the mointain.
It doesn't make sense to me at all.