• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Boeing 727 Stolen In Angola & Never Found (2003)

Kind of sketchy - was it enroute somewhere or swiped off the tarmack?
And why would it be difficult to believe it crashed in the wilds somewhere in Africa?
 
They must surely have air trafic controll, wouldn't someone have seen it disappear from the radar screen ?
 
It's not impossible that it could've crashed somewhere -- I've heard of a plane in Brazil that crashed and was found months or a year later ... during that time the whereabouts of the plane was unknown. It had crashed in the jungle somewhere. Investigators were speculating that the plane may have been flying at night and didn't know that they were flying too low.
 
Sounds like it's done a Stardust, alright. Africa's a big place and aircraft can break into surprisingly small bits.
 
Yep, I'm sure I heard somewhere (how do they do that BBC prog ages ago) that large objects falling from great heights can virtually vapourise on impact... Still very interesting all the same... who knows what happened .. ?! :confused:
 
Missing Plane

I live in S.E. Mo and this is on the news about every night they say they know the flight plan of the plane and still can not find it .
Nebka
 
There it is! -- interestingly enough, I found a reference to this on one of the internet compost heaps that I frequently go slumming in. Gives me some slim hope that possilbly James Blish was right. ;)

London - A Boeing 727 plane, whose sudden disappearance in Angola in May unnerved US intelligence agencies, reappeared last week in the Guinean capital Conakry before vanishing once again, Britain's The Guardian reported on Monday

But Strother told the paper that two letters of the plane's old tail number - N844AA - were still showing, proving the aircraft was the same Boeing that was being sought by US diplomats throughout Africa.

"There's absolutely no doubt it's the same aircraft, the old registration is clearly visible," he was quoted as saying.

"We only saw it that one time, now it's gone".
Whoops!
 
The plane, which has been converted into a fuel tanker, is owned by a member of West Africa's Lebanese business community and was being used to carry goods between Beirut and Conakry, according to Strother.

The 28-year-old jetliner was stolen from under the noses of the control tower at the airport in the Angolan capital Luanda on May 25 and until now had not been sighted since. It had been parked at the airport for 14 months.

Angolan state radio said shortly after its disappearance that it had been chartered by the Angolan airline Airangol but was grounded after being banned from overflying Angolan territory on account of a series of irregularities.
So apparently it was swiped off the tarmac, "under the noses of the control tower, where it had been parked for fourteen months". Therefore, it would have had to have been refulled (they drain the tanks of airliners when mothballed), and flown away: not likely that could all have been done without someone noticing :rolleyes:. Personally, this looks to me like "You want a plane? Quick backhander, and we'll chuck you the keys and go to lunch while you have a quick butchers at it ;)...". Also, if it was coverted into a tanker, it could very useful for drug and arms smuggling (lots of scope for false walls, compartments etc). As for a US mainland risk - none really. Max range is just over 2000 miles fully fuelled with minimum payload and about 1500 carrying the max. Course, it could easily get to us, but an unidented airliner coming towards us would probably get noticed.

Probably.

Hopefully :(.
 
Trawling the web for updates, came across these:

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1376660,00.html

and :

http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/9-27-03/discussion.cgi.63.html

I am Joseph B. Padilla, SR.

I am the brother of Ben Charles Padilla, Jr., the suspected pilot of the Missing Boeing 727 Plane that Disappeared from Angola on May 25 2003.

The 727 Plane that everyone keeps stating that has been found in the West African country of Guinea is Not the same plane that disappeared from Angola.
...
I asked the State Dept. to release a statement stating this, but as Mr. Markey told me,
" We know it isn't the same Plane, so it doesn't matter who else doesn't know".

(Waitasecond... wasn't Jose Padilla the alledged al Queda "dirty bomb"er?!!! And this Joseph Padilla is from Florida?!! God, these scriptwriters need to work on getting their continuity straight!)
 
Missing Plane

Why would they say that if it was a diff plane just say so and that we are still looking for the missing plane.
Nebka
 
Update: Almost a year later, no update

Jeepers! Theories...anybody?- a more puzzled than usual lopaka

April 19, 2004

How and why did a Boeing 727 disappear from an African airport?

Ben Charles Padilla is believed to have been piloting a Boeing 727 that took off and disappeared from an Angolan runway on May 25.
(ABC News)
Without a Trace
Mysterious Disappearance of Boeing 727 and Pilot Remains Unsolved

By Adrienne Mand


April 19 — Ben Charles Padilla, an aircraft mechanic, flight engineer and cargo pilot, traveled the world plying his trade for various private companies.

He'd often keep in touch with family members from faraway locales, so it was no surprise in May 2003 when he replied to an e-mail about his mother having a heart attack with news that he was in Africa refurbishing a plane and would contact her as soon as he could.

His family has not heard from him since, and the FBI believes the 51-year-old was aboard a Boeing 727 that took off without authorization from an airport in Angola on May 25 and promptly vanished. At the time, U.S. officials told ABCNEWS they suspected the plane was stolen to run drugs or guns, and some theorized it was crashed for insurance money.

Though there was fear that the former passenger plane, which the FBI says was reconfigured to carry diesel fuel, could be in the hands of terrorists eyeing a Sept. 11-style attack, there was no evidence to link it to terrorism.

The incident touched off an intensive investigation by U.S. intelligence agencies that continues nearly a year later. The plane and Padilla remain unaccounted for — and the mysterious circumstances around their disappearance leave many unanswered questions.

How could a plane vanish? Who has it now? And what happened to Padilla, who was no stranger to assignments like the one that took him to Angola?

Waiting for a Break

"It's been almost a year and I know really no more now than I did in the beginning," said Joseph Padilla of Pensacola, Fla., younger brother of the missing man. Family members are baffled by his disappearance but maintain Ben Padilla would not knowingly have been involved in any illegal activities.

Joseph Padilla suspects there may have been some sort of dispute of ownership between the company that hired his brother and someone else, and that Ben got caught in the middle.

Joseph Padilla stays in contact with the FBI and State Department for updates on the case and provides them with leads from reporters and his own research.
Continued
1 | 2 | 3 | Next


Copyright © 2004 ABCNEWS Internet Ventures.

Full story:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/US/World/missing_plane_040419-1.html
 
Almost on the two-year anniversary and this very odd case continues to drift, at least publicly.


Vol. 11, No. 2,629 - The American Reporter - April 21, 2005
Reporting: Washington

FAMILY OF MISSING 727 PILOT CAN'T GET ANSWERS
by Margie Burns
American Reporter Washongton Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Sept. 11, 2003 -- A Boeing 727 that disappeared from an Angolan airport on May 25, 2003 is still unaccounted for, and the brother of its missing flight engineer has told The American Reporter he has grown frustrated by a lack of response from the Bush administration.

Official statements about the plane have suggested that it may be destined for use in a terrorist plot against the United States such as those carried out by the 19 hijackers of Sept. 11, 2001, who flew airliners into both World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, and another into a Pennsylvania field, killing all aboard the planes and nearly 3,000 people on the ground.

Benjamin Padilla, 51, is one of two aircraft personnel missing since the 727 was last seen. Early reports hinted that Padilla might have been the plane's pilot. In a phone interview, however, Padilla's brother Joseph contradicts this view. "My brother was not licensed to fly a 727," Joseph Padilla, who lives in Pensacola, Fla., said Tuesday. "He could fly small planes, but not this." "He was to be the flight engineer on the plane," Padilla continued, and was tasked with hiring the pilot and co-pilot, but not with flying the plane himself. Joseph Padilla does not know who was hired as pilot and co-pilot.

"I have spoken with the owner, though," said Florida businessman Maury Joseph, owner of Aerospace Sales and Leasing. The two men have spoken several times, most recently about a month ago, Maury Joseph said. It was Mr. Joseph who told Mr. Padilla that his brother was overseeing the crew of flight mechanics reworking the Boeing 727 for repossession. "We didn't know that," Padilla said with obvious distress and anger. "I don't know why the government couldn't have told us that. I don't know why they didn't, but they didn't." The plane had been sitting in the airport just outside of Luanda, in Angola, for 14 months. It needed an overhaul to be ready to be flown out of the country, Padilla said, and his brother Benjamin had been involved in the repairs for a couple of months. Padilla has no theory, and no clues, as to why the plane disappeared or, more importantly to him, why his brother is missing. He is distressed that government suspicion initially appeared to be focused on his brother.

"They said my brother stole it," Padilla said, but "Maury Joseph wired him about $43,000 to pay [costs], I don't know, airport fees or something," and "my brother faxed him a receipt for the money." That was the last time, so far as is known, that anyone heard from Benjamin Padilla, or at least the last time any Westerner heard from him. Joseph Padilla points out that another crew member, John Mikel Mutantu, is also missing. "He's gone, too, and witnesses seen both men get on the plane," on May 25, he says. He points out that the mechanics were in the small town for some time. "[Probably] everybody knew about it; it was the talk of the town maybe." The mystery of the missing Boeing 727 is deepened by the fact that reportedly the plane had been crudely refitted as a diesel-fuel tanker. Its passenger seats had been removed and replaced with fuel containers. The Padilla family is unreleated to Jose Padilla, an American man who was arrested last year in a foiled al-Qaida plot to build a so-called "dirty" or radioactive bomb for detonation in an American city.

In spite of the obvious hypothesis suggesting possible plans for terrorism, the Bush administration is not showing public signs of concern. The White House has not issued a public comment about the plane, which went missing shortly before President George W. Bush's scheduled visit to Africa last Spring.

According to Padilla, the government is not showing much concern privately, either.

"I contact them," he said; they don't get back in touch. Asked whether government officials have gotten in touch with the family since the plane disappeared, he said, "The only time was May 29." That day, a Florida FBI agent asked family members whether they had heard from Benjamin Padilla.

Joseph Padilla said the last time he had talked with his brother was back in January or February. At that time, Padilla was in Indonesia - "Jakarta, I think" - and told his brother in a phone conversation that he was flying cargo "all over the world."

Padilla speculates that his brother might have been working on more than one job, filling in for other engineers on some flights, possibly while waiting for parts ordered for other planes. Mr. Joseph said he did not have time to return calls for comment. Padilla said that Maury Joseph told him that his brother was in the United States last November, and that "he [Maury Joseph] took my brother over there [to Angola] himself." "Something don't seem right," Padilla says repeatedly. The government has told him that they're hunting for the plane, and that the British, French, German and African governments are involved, but nothing beyond that. "We get nothing out of the government," he said.

The two officials he has spoken to most often are Jack Markey of the U.S. Department of State and Adam Cohen in the Washington offices of the FBI. They get very different reviews from Padilla. The FBI's Cohen told him, he said, "When I hear something, I'll call." They last spoke about two months ago. Cohen, a Special Agent in FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., did not return a call from The American Reporter requesting a comment. Markey, on the other hand, is "real nice," said Padilla, who praised the diplomat for "acting like he was trying to help." Markey told him, Padilla said, "'Look, we're stunned too. Here it's our job to find missing Americans, and we can't find your brother, or the plane.'" Asked to comment, Markey, who works in the State Department's Office of Consular Affairs, declined saying that all questions from press have to be routed through the public relations office. He indicated that he had tried to behave sympathetically in dealing with relatives of the missing:

"I try to treat them the way I'd want someone to treat my grandmother or mother" in a similar situation, Markey said. One hypothesis that might account for the plane's disappearance is bribery or corruption. Angola was widely reported to balk at joining the "Coalition of the Willing" in preparation for the Iraq war. At one point, the small African nation left the list of coalition countries, only to rejoin it four days later. Asked whether the 727 might have been turned into some form of payoff, Padilla answered, "With our government, you never know. They're so secretive," he emphasized. "They're so - I don't know what the right word might be - arrogant, I think," he added. "They work for us; they get paid with money from the taxpayers. But they just blow us off." Speaking the phrase "national security," he dismissed it contemptuously. "Bull," he said. "We've gotten more information, more help, from the news media than from our own government," Padilla added, mentioning television interviews he and his sister Benita had done. "That's just not right."

He gave the government, especially Markey, credit for trying to find the plane. But, Padilla said, "I wish someone [in the Bush administration] would take charge, get with the family members, and tell us what's happening. But nobody's done that, and it's not fair to us." The FBI came in for special criticism from Padilla: "They came into our life" to ask about his brother, "and then they just went away again."

Asked what the government is doing in the search, Padilla referred with some distress to the "reward" (amount unknown) being offered by the government. He saw his brother's name and picture "right up under Saddam and his sons," in a "Rewards for Justice" posting by the Justice Department. "I think it's kind of stupid," he added; he was told by officials that the reward is being advertised "in the Africa area" with billboards and matchbook covers, etc. Padilla is now listed and pictured as Ben Charles Padilla at the FBI's Web site under "Seeking Information": http://www.fbi.gov/mostwant/seekinfo/seek.htm. Joe Padilla made one further effort to nudge his civil servants into action: calling the Central Intelligence Agency last week. He said he found the woman he spoke to at the CIA, whose name he did not know, unhelpful.

"She said, 'I can't give you any information,'" he recalled today. "She asked me for my name, and my address, and I gave it to her, and she asked me for my phone numbers," and he complied. "Then she asked me for my Social Security number, and I said, 'I'm not giving you my Social Security number on the phone. You're the CIA; you should know that.' So then she told me I didn't need to be a 'smartass' about it." "We pay them with our tax dollars," Padilla repeated, "and she is the CIA. They do know [our Social Security numbers]."

Margie Burns is The American Reporter's Washington Correspondent.

Copyright 2005 Joe Shea The American Reporter. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.american-reporter.com/2,629/683.html
 
Perhaps it was broken down for parts in a staggeringly short amount of time, as in the time lapse scene from Lord Of War.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Perhaps it was broken down for parts in a staggeringly short amount of time, as in the time lapse scene from Lord Of War.

There’s a scene in the (tightly factually-based) telly series Narcos where the Medellin cartel delivers a C-130 load of cash to a remote dirt airstrip. As the head man walks off he casually says to his lead henchman, “Now destroy the plane.”

The scene is intended to demonstrate the jaw-dropping wealth of the narcotraficantes; it could account for the disappearance of a second-hand jet in a primitive country.

maximus otter
 
There’s a scene in the (tightly factually-based) telly series Narcos where the Medellin cartel delivers a C-130 load of cash to a remote dirt airstrip. As the head man walks off he casually says to his lead henchman, “Now destroy the plane.”

The scene is intended to demonstrate the jaw-dropping wealth of the narcotraficantes; it could account for the disappearance of a second-hand jet in a primitive country.

maximus otter
Could've just gone down mid-Atlantic though.
 
Back
Top