Did anyone else see the shown on the Steve Fawcett's plane crash last night - on the Discover Channel??

At the very end they suggest several key points:

--The body was 3/4 mile from the crash site (I think I heard the distance correctly).

--The large animals (black bear, mountain lion, coyote)that may have consumed parts of his body typically wouldn't drag the body such a long distance - they would have eaten it where it laid - or at most drug it a shorter distance

--The harness used on that plane was a multi-belt system used by stunt/acrobatic pilots and the central latch porton was not connected to the female latch-points.

--An animal would not have been able to unlatch the harness since it requires a rotation movement.

--Though they never said it outright, they suggested that the harness should have survived the crash without coming unlatched.

They indicated that the only real likely scenario is that he somehow survived the crash, unbuckled the harness, and managed to walk/crawl in the direction of the nearest town before dying.

They showed a picture of the female portion of one of the harness straps with no nylon strap attached. I wonder what happened to the strap. The portion was bright and shiny - like new. There weren't any obvious signs of charing. If the strap had burned up in the post-crash fire, I would have thought we'd see charred nylon stuck to the latch. Maybe not.

I can't help wonder what is fact and what is fiction for ratings.

I didn't see the show but I believe another possibility was that he didn't have the harness latched when he crashed and was somehow thrown clear. From what I recall seeing of the wreckage in photos, I can't imagine anyone surviving the impact. But stranger things have happened.

Lots of things could have happened.

He could have survived the crash, and been able to walk out that far before trauma or a cardiac event took him out.

Only to find out in a sceance (sp).

The one pilot said "I guarantee you that a wild animal could not open that buckle", so that's pretty much right out there saying that Fossett would have been the only thing capable of manipulating it. Whether he never buckled himself in, or it unlatched it before crashing, will never be known. However, from the pictures shown in the program, the buckle was very close to some major parts of the aircraft. Leading anyone with a basic knowledge of physics to realize that the part had to have been dropped there. Otherwise, it would have been propelled farther away from the crash site.

I was thinking when they were showing the video of buckle, I would have done something more substantial with it that would just scream "I survived". Like, putting it on a tree limb, on what is left of a wing, etc, so that people could see that it was placed there.

I'm pretty sure that would be the last thing on my mind as I was crawling away from the wreckage.