The Inyo region was flown over repeatedly during the monthlong search for Mr. Fossett, but those who have hiked and flown over it say it is dense, mountainous forest where something as small as a two-seat light aircraft would be easy to overlook.
It's all too easy to blame pilot error when things go wrong, says aviation writer and light aircraft pilot Sylvia Wrigley, author of Why Planes Crash.
Building a light aircraft in the living room is hard, but building a model aircraft (a.k.a. drone) in the living room is easy.
It is easier for aircraft to accurately target planes but it should also be easier for a pilot to identify a plane as a commercial airliner.
Autumn skies are generally clear 70percentt of the time, and that is quite likely to make it easier for aircraft and satellites to conduct surveillance and find targets, experts on Asian weather have said.
The C-47 was a forgiving aircraft, easy to fly and easily maintained under primitive field conditions.
The test pilots found the aircraft easy to fly, but the control forces were very high at speed and it lacked enough directional stability.
"This Morning was much easier, a stable aircraft as opposed to a stubby winged acrobatic plane that really should not be in the air," said Madeley.
In the United States, development of the flying car was given some breathing room eight years ago when the F.A.A. created a new classification, the light-sport category, to encourage the design of small, easy-to-fly aircraft.
Something similar is being proposed for autonomous civil drones, with ground-based pilots responding to communications and air-traffic control instructions as if they were in the cockpit.In many ways automating a ship should be a lot easier than automating aircraft, Mr Levander believes.
