6 Mysterious Airplane Disappearances in Aviation
History
Malaysia
Airlines MH370 is only the latest in a long line of planes that flew off the
radar.
The
shocking disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has captured the
attention of millions around the world as the search for the airplane and its
passengers and crew continues. What happened to the flight’s 239 passengers and
crew after the plane left Kuala Lumpur on Saturday? It is becoming an
increasingly desperate question as the days pass.
But
it’s hardly the first mystery of its kind. While it’s extremely rare that a
flight simply vanishes with barely a trace, aviation history has seen its fair
share of enigmatic disappearances and unfortunate flights that literally flew
off the radar. Here are six of the half-solved and unsolved airline mysteries
that kept investigators clueless for years.
Air
France Flight 447: An
Airbus A330 flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris plunged into the Atlantic Ocean
in 2009, killing all 228 passengers and crew on board. But it took a full five
days for search and rescue teams to find the wreck and another three years for
investigators to report that ice crystals had caused the autopilot to disconnect.
The bodies of 74 passengers remain unrecovered.
Amelia
Earhart: One of the most
storied and enduring legends of aviation history, ace pilot Amelia Earhart
disappeared in her twin-engine monoplane Electra over the Pacific Ocean in 1937
in an attempt to circumnavigate the globe. No trace of her plane was ever found
even after a multi-million dollar search effort, and Earhart was officially
declared dead in 1939.
Flying
Tiger Line Flight 739: A U.S. military flight left Guam in
1962 with more 90 personnel headed for the Philippines, but it never arrived.
The pilots never issued a distress call, and 1,300 people involved in the U.S.
military search never found any trace of wreckage. A Liberian tanker ship’s
crew claim to have seen an “intensely luminous” light in the sky at the
approximate time of the flight, but the U.S. Civil Aeronautics board ruled it
was “unable to determine the probable cause of the incident.”
British
South American Airways: It
took more than 50 years to find any trace of the 11 people aboard a 1947 flight
that disappeared in the Andes Mountains. A pair of Argentinian rock climbers
discovered engine wreckage in the Andes in 1998, and an army expedition later
found human remains as well. Some say the plane caused an avalanche when it crashed
into Mount Tupangato and was buried in the snow.
Bermuda
Triangle: A series of disappearances over the
so-called “Devil’s Triangle,” the vast expanse of ocean between Florida, Puerto
Rico, and Bermuda has given the region an unshakeable notoriety. Two British
South American Airways passenger jets disappeared in the region in 1948 and
1949, and more than 51 people were lost on the two flights and never found. In
1945, five American bombers ran a training mission over the area and were never
recovered; the aircraft charged with finding the men deployed with a 13-man
crew, and also vanished.
Uruguayan
Air Force Flight 571: A flight headed to Santiago, Chile
carrying 45 passengers and crew crashed into the Andes mountains in poor
weather in 1972, killing 12 people. Authorities were unaware of any survivors
for 72 days. In the meantime, eight were killed in an avalanche that hit the
plane’s wreckage where they were taking shelter, and the remaining 16 resorted
to cannibalism to stay alive, eating the corpses of the dead before they were
finally found more than two months after disappearing out of the sky.
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