Aircraft that vanished - 2

The continuing failure to find any trace of the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 that disappeared on March 8 will cast a shadow over the annual conference of the world’s airlines that opens today in Doha.

But as I have mentioned before, aircraft DO disappear (see my blog of April 13). On the night of June 23, 1950, in what was then America’s deadliest ever commercial airliner accident, a Northwest Orient DC-4 with 58 people on board went missing en route from New York to Seattle.

It vanished from radar screens 3,500 feet above Lake Michigan. Divers turned up some upholstery and other light debris, but the main wreckage has never been found, so pity those trying to locate flight MH370 in the vastness of the Indian Ocean.

A Varig Brazilian cargo Boeing 707 disappeared just 30 minutes after take-off from Narita airport in Tokyo on January 30, 1979. In addition to six crew, it was carrying more than a million dollars’ worth of paintings. No trace has ever been found of people, paintings or aircraft.

* The story of the Moscow football stadium disaster of 1982 from the Romanian edition of 'Disastrous History of the World' - http://www.ziartricolorul.ro/tragedii-la-fotbal/

Aircraft that vanished

The hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines 777 goes on, and on, but, of course, it is not the only aircraft to have vanished without trace. Perhaps the most famous was the Lockheed Electra being flown by Amelia Earhart (pictured) in her attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world in 1937. A voice message from Earhart and her navigator near Howland Island in the mid-Pacific was the last thing ever heard from the flight.

Much bigger aircraft have also disappeared. In 2003, a Boeing 727, being leased by TAAG Angola Airlines, took off from Luanda with its tracking transponder switched off. The aircraft had been idle for 14 months and had racked up millions of dollars in airport fees. No trace of it or the one person known to be on board has ever been found.

In 1962, a Flying Tiger Line Lockheed Super Constellation chartered by the US military disappeared over the western Pacific. It had departed from Travis Air Force Base, California, carrying 93 American soldiers to fight the Viet Cong, 3 South Vietnamese military personnel and 11 crew. The pilot’s last message gave the aircraft’s position as 280 miles west of Guam.

A tanker in the area reported seeing what looked like an aircraft exploding, but one of the biggest air and sea searches in the history of the Pacific found nothing. Another Super Constellation from Travis Air Base carrying secret military cargo crashed the same day in the Aleutian Islands, leading to strong suspicions that both were sabotaged.

The mystery of flight MH370

Perhaps the most baffling mystery in commercial aviation history – the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 – continues to defy solution, and the agony of those with friends and loved ones aboard goes on.

Search aircraft from five countries have been scouring the ocean for a sign of the Boeing 777 that left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on March 8, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew. The last contact with it came less than an hour after take-off.

Much attention is now focused on the seas 1,400 miles off Perth, where there have been a number of reports of floating debris. Australia’s prime minister says there is now ‘hope’, but no more than that, that we may be on the verge of finding out what happened to the aircraft.

The Malaysian authorities believe MH370 was taken deliberately off course, for reasons unknown, and there is now speculation that the flight crew may have passed out through lack of oxygen.