(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-02-16 17:47

In 2002, after years of trying, Fossett became the first person to fly nonstop around the world alone in a balloon, setting the record on his sixth attempt. It took him two weeks to float 19,428.6 miles around the Southern Hemisphere.

Three years later, in March 2005, he was first to fly a plane solo around the world without stopping or refueling, covering 23,000 miles in 67 hours in the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer jet.

Solo flights represent the ultimate challenge, he told The Associated Press when the GlobalFlyer was introduced in 2004.

"They become more of an endurance endeavor, and become focused on the ability and the performance of a single person," he said.

Fossett made nearly as many headlines for his narrow escapes as he did for his successes. In 1998, during one of his solo around-the-world attempts, his balloon ripped during a storm, sending him plunging 29,000 feet into the Coral Sea. Falling at about 2,500 feet per minute, Fossett blacked out.

He said his next memory was "waking up with the capsule upside down, half full of water and on fire."

He was fished out by the crew of a schooner and was still on the ship when Branson called to invite him on another round-the-world attempt later that year, this time as part of a team. It ended in another dramatic rescue.

Branson, Fossett and Swedish balloonist Per Lindstrand made it more than halfway before poor wind conditions forced them to ditch in the shark-infested waters off Honolulu on Christmas Day 1998. The Coast Guard spent about US$130,000 sending planes, helicopters and a boat to rescue the trio.

Fossett pressed on because of his thirst for accomplishments, and for all his close calls, those who knew him well said he wasn't reckless. Fossett once said the most dangerous thing he ever did was fall off his bicycle in Chicago without a helmet on.

"I'm doing these things for personal accomplishment, not the thrills," he told Stanford's alumni magazine in 1997, after his second around-the-world balloon attempt ended in India. "I don't do these things because I have a death wish."

Born in Jackson, Tennessee, in 1944, Fossett grew up in Garden Grove, California, and climbed his first mountain as a 12-year-old sett.

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