Missing planes. Where do the planes go? Ghost plane

The mysterious disappearance of planes gives rise to many rumors, arguments and theories. It would seem that in the 21st century, with the advent of modern technology, it is not difficult to track a huge aircraft. However, they continue to disappear, raising new questions.

The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

From time to time, media reports surface about the discovery of the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared under mysterious circumstances on March 8, 2014. On Thursday, March 24, Australian Transport Minister Darren Chester said that aircraft debris discovered off the coast of Mozambique in March almost certainly belonged to the missing Boeing 777.

Last July, a fragment of the wing was found on Reunion Island. The French prosecutor's office confirmed that it belongs to the missing plane. In December, Australian authorities said the missing Boeing 777 may be located in the southern part of the search zone in the Indian Ocean.

AHeneen/wikipedia.org/CC BY 3.0

Boeing 777 route based on military radar data
According to the official version of the investigation, the plane was hijacked by unknown persons who had good aviation training. However, this version has many inconsistencies. In particular, there was not a single suspicious person on board, and no group claimed responsibility. In addition, the plane flew for seven hours in an unknown direction instead of announcing the hostage situation.

Boeing 727-223 hijacking

The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is not the only plane crash that has left many questions in its wake. In 2003, a strange incident occurred at the Angola airport. Ben Charles Padilla, a certified flight engineer and aircraft mechanic with a private pilot's license, and his assistant John Mikel Mutantu were repairing a Boeing 727-223 aircraft. The plane belonged to the American airline Aerospace Sales & Leasing and was leased from Angolan Airlines at the time of its disappearance.

RuthAS/wikipedia.org/CC BY 3.0. Boeing 727-223

Suddenly, the plane disappeared along with its employees, none of whom were active pilots. According to the official version, the plane was hijacked by a flight engineer and his assistant, but the law-abiding Padilla only had a private pilot's license, and the assistant could not fly the plane. According to one version, Padilla was hired by the United States to return the plane; according to another, both technicians were kept on board by force. After that, no one saw either the plane or the people.

Missing Amelia Earhart

In 1937, the monoplane on which the famous pilot Amelia Earhart tried to fly around the globe along the equator disappeared without a trace. However, during one of the flight sections, communication with the pilot was interrupted. The search operation for Amelia Earhart was the largest and most expensive in the history of the American Navy, but it did not bring results.

Wikipedia.org/public domain. Amelia Earhart, Los Angeles, 1928

Various versions of the reasons for the disappearance of the plane have been put forward - from its abduction by the Japanese to landing on a desert island. There are even those who believe that Earhart returned home, changed her name and began to live a quiet, ordinary life. One way or another, the search for her plane continues to this day, and the exact reasons for the disappearance have not been established.

Boeing 707 disappearance

The disappearance of the Boeing 707 in 1979 is also a mystery that still cannot be solved. The Boeing 707-323C cargo flight was carrying six crew and cargo, including 153 paintings by Japanese-Brazilian artist Manabu Mabe. The cost of the paintings was $1,240,000. While flying over the Pacific Ocean, the plane did not make contact. No one saw him again.

Marmet/wikipedia.org/CC BY-SA 3.0. Boeing 707-323C

The aircraft did not issue distress signals before disappearing. No debris or oil stains from fuel were found. Among the versions of what happened were the depressurization of the plane, an attack by collectors, a navigation error, an attack by Soviet fighters and others. However, all these versions had many inconsistencies. In the history of civil aviation, this case is considered one of the most mysterious.

Disappearance of L-1049 over the Pacific Ocean

The disappearance of L-1049 over the Pacific Ocean in 1962 was the largest unexplained tragedy of the 20th century by number of people. The plane was flying from the Marianas to the Philippine Islands, but two and a half hours after departure, communication with it stopped. Large-scale searches have yielded no results. All 107 people on board were declared dead.

RuthAS/wikipedia.org/CC BY 3.0. Lockheed L-1049H

According to testimony from the crew of the tanker, which was in the area of ​​the alleged disappearance, an explosion of an unidentified airborne object occurred in the air. According to the official version, L-1049 exploded, but no debris was found in an area of ​​144,000 square miles. Thus, there is no evidence that the sailors from the tanker observed the crash of the missing plane.

These are not all cases of mysterious disappearances. At the same time, in a strange way, the scenario is repeated in the same details, differing from other cases only in the duration of the time intervals. The plane takes off, and after some time, first communication with the crew disappears, and then the display of the ship’s trajectory on the controllers’ radars disappears. Searches sometimes end with the discovery of debris, and sometimes with nothing.

Pixabay.com/CC0 Public Domain

At the same time, all alternative versions are immediately swept aside and classified, leaving ordinary citizens with only questions. Where do the planes go? We may never know the answer to this question. In the entire history of aviation, more than enough aircraft have disappeared, and there is not a single solved disappearance. And the next loss of a plane will simply be added to the list of similar phenomena.

The recent story of a Boeing flying from Malaysia shocked everyone's imagination. How could a plane, an iron hulk with 227 passengers on board, disappear without a single trace? Until recently, search teams could not find any traces of the crash, no bodies, no black boxes - the fate of the plane was a real mystery. It was recently determined that the missing Boeing 777 crashed in the southern Indian Ocean. However, planes had disappeared before him - he was not the first and certainly not the last.

1. Boeing 727 stolen from the airport in Luanda, Angola

On May 25, 2003, a Boeing 727-223 was stolen from Cuatro de Fevereiro airport. It belonged to the American airline Aerospace Sales & Leasing and was leased from Angolan Airlines at the time of its disappearance. The plane was malfunctioning and two people had to work to fix it - Ben Charles Padilla, a certified flight engineer and aircraft mechanic with a private pilot's license, and his assistant John Mikel Mutantu. None of them could steal the plane: the assistant could not fly it into the sky, and the law-abiding Padilla only had a private pilot's license. After they boarded the plane, it began to move chaotically along the runway. The ship's crew did not contact dispatchers and took off without turning on the transponders. Since then, neither the plane nor the people have been seen.

Theoretically, Padilla could be at the helm. It is believed that Angola did not pay lease payments and he was hired to return the plane to the United States. Another opinion is that both citizens were held on board against their will.

2. At the beginning of the Vietnam War, a plane carrying American troops disappears into the skies over the Pacific Ocean.

On March 6, 1962, US Air Force Flight 739 departed California for Vietnam, carrying 96 passengers and 11 crew members. After refueling in Guam, the plane headed to a military base in the Philippines, but never reached it. He disappeared somewhere in the Western Pacific Ocean. No traces of the crash or bodies could be found. After contact with the plane was lost, information was received from a nearby tanker that there had been an explosion in the sky.

Sabotage? Problem? Engine problems? No one knows.

3. A popular musician disappeared on a plane over the English Channel

On December 15, 1944, Glenn Miller, leader of one of the greatest swing bands of all time, boarded a plane in England that would take him to Paris. This never happened.

The American musician went to war in 1942, at the peak of his popularity. At the age of 38, it was too late for him to become a soldier, but the army orchestra played under his leadership.

The official version of his death is as follows. The plane was flying over the English Channel in bad weather and crashed. However, this is not the only opinion. Some believe that the plane was shot down by enemy forces, and others believe that Glenn Miller did fly to Paris and was captured by a German detachment.

4. Amelia Earhart disappeared while trying to fly around the globe

The first woman pilot to fly an airplane across the Atlantic Ocean. She went missing while flying over the Pacific Ocean, near Howland Island.

They searched for Earhart, but found no trace of her. It is believed that she failed to land on Howland Island and ran out of fuel. There are even crazier theories: supposedly she was a secret agent, flying on a mission to Japan, where she was discovered and imprisoned. The most pleasant version: Earhart returned home, changed her name and began to live a quiet, ordinary life.

There are witnesses (I wonder how they could see this?) who claim to have seen her plane land on the uninhabited island of Nikumaroro. In 1989, this version was tested; human bones, women's cosmetics, shoes and a jar of freckle cream were found on the island. Who to believe?

5. A squadron of five planes disappeared over the Bermuda Triangle

On December 5, 1945, these aircraft were performing navigation exercises and disappeared while flying over the Bermuda Triangle. In total there were 14 people in the squadron.

Two hours after the start of the flight, the squadron commander reported that his compass was broken and he could not determine his location. The same thing happened to other planes. After another two hours, strange, confusing messages began to arrive. The last was a call from the squadron commander to abandon the planes because they were running out of fuel.

An hour later, a US Navy plane set off to search and rescue the squadron, but the planes and men were gone. A tanker that happened to be nearby reported that it saw an explosion 20 minutes before the search engines departed. Hundreds of ships and planes searched for the missing squadron; they combed thousands of miles, but found nothing.

Source 6The Brazilian Cargo Plane Carrying $1 Million in Artworks

In 1979, a Brazilian airline Varig plane disappeared half an hour after taking off from Narita Airport in Tokyo. On board the plane were 153 drawings by Brazilian-Japanese artist Manabu Mabe, valued at $1.2 million. The plane, the drawings and six crew members disappeared without a trace. Robbery or technical malfunction? No one knows.

7. The plane disappeared en route from an atoll in the Pacific Ocean to Los Angeles

In 1964, a plane with nine passengers on board disappeared en route from Wake Island to Los Angeles. When he was 500 miles northeast of Los Angeles, the pilot reported engine problems. Searchers found an oil slick on the surface of the water, and some even claimed to have seen the tail of the plane plunge into the ocean, but no traces of the plane or passengers were ever found.

Authorities in Australia, China and Malaysia announced the end of the search for the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200. The plane was flying flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and disappeared from radar screens on the night of March 8, 2014. There were 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board. 26 states tried to unravel the mystery of the crash. The total cost of the investigation into the crash was close to $200 million. The fragments found did not help shed light on the reasons for the disappearance of the aircraft. Read about the main versions of the tragedy, including mystical ones, and why none of them have received confirmation.

• Reuters

Chronicle of the tragedy

On March 8, 2014 at 00:42 Malaysia time, Boeing MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The flight took place as usual. The last time the crew made contact was at 01:19 - when moving from the area of ​​​​responsibility of the Malaysian controllers to the Vietnamese ones. The pilots wished their Malaysian colleagues “Good night”. At 01:21, the transponders transmitting information about the location of the aircraft and its identification data were switched off. At 01:22, the Boeing disappeared from the radar screens of air traffic control services. After that, he was in the air for about seven more hours, but radically deviated from the planned route. At 08:11, the last signal was sent from the plane to the Inmarsat satellite, through which the Boeing 777 transmitted technical information about the operation of its Rolls-Royce engines to ground services. At 09:15, the airliner no longer responded to a communication request from Inmarsat.

The liner was searched in the South China and Andaman seas, in the Strait of Malacca and in the Indian Ocean. The area of ​​the study territories is 7.7 million km². Deep-sea searches were also carried out over an area of ​​60,000 km².

• RIA News

Restore by fragments

The first fragment of the airliner was discovered only a year after the disappearance of MH370 - in July 2015, a wing part and a door were found on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean. The rest of the finds occurred in 2016: in March, aircraft wreckage was discovered on the shore of the strait between Madagascar and Mozambique, in May a fragment of a wing was found on the island of Mauritius, and in June another part of the wing was found off the coast of Tanzania. However, all this did not help narrow the search area for the airliner and determine its location.

Uncontrolled fall

One of the versions put forward by experts is that the plane crashed. According to this hypothesis, the airliner was not controlled by the pilot at the fatal moment. This, according to Australian Transport Safety Authority spokesman Greg Hood, is indicated by an analysis of Boeing signals. Presumably the airliner fell on March 9, 2014 at 08:19. At that moment, it ran out of fuel and two engines caught fire. According to experts' calculations, the plane crashed into the Indian Ocean at tremendous speed - up to 20 thousand feet (6096 m) per minute. The board most likely collided with the ocean surface at almost a right angle. This explains his disappearance without a trace.

Human factor

Many people call the crew commander, Zachary Ahmad Shah, the culprit of the tragedy. The FBI searched his home and found a simulator simulating an airliner cockpit. Decryption of the hard drives showed that about a month before the crash, the pilot was practicing a route that would lead to the ship crashing into the Indian Ocean. This is exactly what investigators believe Ahmad Shah did in reality. The alleged reason for this action is depression due to the upcoming divorce from his wife.

• Boeing crew commander Zachary Ahmad Shah (right) with friend Peter Chong (left).
• Reuters

Information or life

Among the scenarios for the disappearance of Boeing, there are truly detective ones - the plane was hijacked and landed at one of the military airfields. The target of the hijacking was 20 leading scientists on board (12 Chinese and 8 Malaysians) of the Freescale Semiconductor company, who were developing cutting-edge technologies for aircraft that make them invisible to radar, and camouflage devices.

This version is confirmed by the fact that Zachary Ahmad Shah also practiced landing on his home flight simulator at five airfields in the Indian Ocean region, including the runway at the US military base Diego Garcia. Shortly before the fateful flight, for some reason he erased this data, as well as all his work and social plans in his diary.

An even more twisted version of the hijacking for the sake of obtaining invaluable information on stealth technology belongs to former Delta airline pilot Field McConnell. He claims that the plane's crew was eliminated, after which MH370 was intercepted by the US military and remotely landed on the island of Diego Garcia at a secret US Air Force base. The plane was then allegedly lifted into the air again using the same remote control and sank in the Indian Ocean.

• A suspected plane wreck was discovered off the east coast of Africa.

Mysterious cargo

The conspiracy theories don't end there. The reason for the disappearance of Boeing is also called a certain mysterious cargo that was on board. In addition to luggage, the plane allegedly carried about 4 tons of exotic mangosteen fruit, 220 kg of lithium batteries for phones and computers, as well as 2 tons of some electronic equipment, the sender of which was “classified by agreement with the airline.”

Operation anti-terror

Another version says that the Boeing was captured by terrorists and shot down. According to the former head of the French airlines Proteus Airlines, Marc Dugen, the plane was destroyed by the American military, who suspected that the airliner was hijacked by terrorists. This is how the Americans played it safe to prevent a repeat of the events of September 11, 2001. This option is supported by the fact that there were two passengers on board using false passports - Iranians Puriya Nur Mohammad Merdad and Delavar Seyed-Mohammadreza.

Just fantastic

There are absolutely fantastic versions of the disappearance of the Malaysian Boeing. Over the course of two years, there were a lot of them: the plane became invisible, fell into a black hole or into a new Bermuda Triangle. However, so far no one has been able to test either these or more realistic hypotheses.

Over the years, airplanes have disappeared without a trace in different parts of the world. Some were found. The mystery of the disappearance of some has not yet been solved...

The plane that was found half a century later

On April 3, 1961, a Lan Chile airline plane disappeared in the Andes. There were 24 people on board, including 8 football players and two coaches of the Chilean football club Green Cross. The tail of the plane and part of the human remains were discovered a week later. The plane crash was a big shock for Chile and for fans of professional football. There would have been nothing mysterious in history if this plane had not been found again almost half a century later. In February 2015, Chilean climbers discovered the fuselage of an airplane near the country's capital, Santiago. In addition to the wreckage, the remains of the victims were found at the crash site.

The Disappearance of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

On July 31, 1944, Antoine de Saint-Exupery set off on a reconnaissance flight from an airfield on the island of Corsica in a Lockheed P38 Lightning fighter. The plane did not return to base, the writer disappeared. It was assumed that the writer could desert, get into an accident or commit suicide (he suffered from depression). In 1998, a Corsican fisherman caught a silver bracelet engraved with the name of the writer and his wife, and the address of the publisher of The Little Prince. In 2003, after an underwater expedition, aircraft debris was found in the area of ​​the island. The remains of the writer (sea water quickly dissolves bones) were not found. In 2008, the book “Saint-Exupery: The Last Secret” by French journalist Jacques Pradel was published. In the book, 88-year-old German journalist and fighter pilot during World War II, Horst Rippert, admitted that he shot down the same plane. In an interview, Rippert also said that he was a fan of Exupery, and if he had known that he was at the helm, he would never have shot. The wreckage of Exupery's plane is now in the Air and Space Museum in Le Bourget.

10 Missing Planes of the Bermuda Triangle

This story is about how the Bermuda Triangle gained its infamous fame. On December 5, 1945, five torpedo bombers disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle area, along with 14 crew members. A rescue seaplane set off to search, but also disappeared. There were 13 people on board. No wreckage or crew bodies were ever found. The cause of the loss is unknown: presumably experienced military pilots who had repeatedly flown in the area became disoriented and crashed when they ran out of fuel. As for the seaplane, it most likely exploded due to a fuel leak (a technical drawback of this model). Traces of the accident were hidden by a hurricane - the area is considered meteorologically difficult.
After this incident, four more planes and 92 people disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle from 1948 to 1965. There were no other plane crashes in the area.

Become a cannibal to survive

On October 13, 1972, a plane carrying a team of Uruguayan rugby players and their relatives crashed in the Andes. 12 people died in a collision with the ground, some of the passengers died from severe injuries. On the tenth day after the accident, 28 people remained alive. The fuselage was at an altitude of 3600 meters, there were almost no food and water supplies, as well as medicine. Survivors heard on the radio that the search for the missing flight had stopped. Desperate people decided to eat the bodies of their dead comrades. Water was extracted from snow, which was heated on metal fragments exposed to the sun. By the end of October, eight more people had died due to avalanches. Wounded and weak people continued to die.
The two survivors decided to go for help. After twelve days of travel, they met a shepherd in the mountains, who reported the victims of the accident. The 16 miraculously surviving passengers were found 72 days after the plane crash.

Malaysian Boeing

On March 8, 2014, a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 disappeared in the skies over the South China Sea. The plane was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. There were 239 people on board. During the investigation, they found out that someone turned off the communication systems, then the plane changed course and circled in the sky for about 7 hours. In January 2015, the flight was officially declared missing, and passengers and crew members were declared dead in order to begin paying compensation to relatives. On March 8, 2015, on the anniversary of the tragedy, a report on the progress of the investigation was published - there was nothing new in it.
On July 29, a piece of an airplane wing was discovered on one of the beaches of Reunion Island to the east. The fragment was covered with sea shells, indicating that it had been in the water for a long time. The fragment was sent for examination. The assumptions were confirmed.

MOSCOW, June 9 - RIA Novosti. The ill-fated Malaysian flight MH 370 could have disappeared without a trace in the Indian Ocean, leaving no traces on the surface of the water, due to the fact that the board collided with the surface of the ocean at almost a right angle, mathematicians say in an article published in the journal Notices of the American Mathematical Society.

“What happened to MH 370 and its passengers next will likely remain a mystery until one day someone finds the plane’s black box and decodes it. Our examination shows that, most likely, the board fell into the ocean in a steep dive," said Goong Chen of Texas A&M University in Doha, Qatar.

Chen and his colleagues, including Russian-Qatari mathematician Alexey Sergeev, came to this conclusion by trying to reproduce the crash of MH 370 using the EOS and RAAD supercomputers in Texas and Qatar.

As scientists explain, when any object falls into water at high speed and at a certain angle, two things arise that we usually do not notice - a “bubble” of air surrounding the falling body and falling under the water with it, and a kind of “hump” of strongly compressed water, which moves along with the sinking object.

The result of the existence of these things, as shown by simulations by Chen and his colleagues, is that the plane will not sink immediately and some of its debris, fuel and technical fluids should remain on the surface. This scenario would occur at almost all angles of entry into the water and over a very wide range of speeds, leading scientists to speculate that MH 370 might have crashed into the ocean in a steep dive.

Repeated calculations on supercomputers confirmed that such a scenario led to the desired consequences. In this case, the plane sank without a trace in the waters of the Indian Ocean, leaving no traces, and its fuselage was practically not destroyed - during the fall, only the wings of the airliner, which had a large mass and therefore quickly sank to the bottom of the ocean, broke.

According to scientists, traces of the liner should have been present on the surface of the Indian Ocean, even if the pilots managed to perform a miracle and land the liner on the surface of the water, similar to the so-called miracle on the Hudson in 2009. The captain of US Airways Flight 1549 was able to make an emergency landing of Airobus 320 in Hudson Bay when birds struck the engines and disabled them.

Even if the pilots of MH 370 were able to pull off this feat, the giant waves that exist in the open waters of the Indian Ocean should have destroyed the aircraft and left traces of this disaster in the form of slicks of fuel and debris, which, however, did not happen. Therefore, a steep dive is the only plausible explanation for the disaster.

How could MH 370 end up in such a situation? Mathematicians offer several explanations for this. Firstly, the plane’s autopilot could have failed, which usually leads to a steep dive. Secondly, given the recent accident with Germanwings flight 9525, it cannot be ruled out that the pilot or his assistant committed suicide. The third option is a failure in the engine fuel supply system.

Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200, flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board, disappeared from radar screens on the night of March 8, 2014. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said on March 24 that the aircraft crashed in the southern Indian Ocean: this was evidenced by an analysis of satellite data. No one is believed to have survived.