6 Mysterious Airplane Disappearances in Aviation History

Susan · #1 ● 03-12-2014, 10:52 AM

The baffling disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has captured global attention as the search for the plane, its passengers, and crew intensifies. The fate of the 239 individuals on board since the aircraft departed from Kuala Lumpur on Saturday remains a deeply troubling question as time passes.

However, this is not the aviation world's first encounter with such a perplexing mystery. While exceedingly rare, incidents involving planes vanishing with minimal trace have occurred throughout aviation history, confounding investigators for extended periods. Here, we recount six of these partially resolved or unsolved airline mysteries that left investigators puzzled for years:

Air France Flight 447: In 2009, an Airbus A330 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, claiming the lives of all 228 passengers and crew on board. It took five days for search and rescue teams to locate the wreckage and an additional three years for investigators to determine that ice crystals had triggered the autopilot's disconnection. Sadly, the remains of 74 passengers remained unrecovered.

Amelia Earhart: Aviation legend Amelia Earhart vanished in 1937 while attempting to circumnavigate the globe in her twin-engine monoplane Electra, disappearing over the Pacific Ocean. Despite an extensive, multimillion-dollar search effort, no trace of her plane was ever found, leading to her official declaration of death in 1939.

Flying Tiger Line Flight 739: A U.S. military flight departed Guam in 1962, bound for the Philippines with over 90 personnel on board, but it never reached its destination. No distress call was issued, and despite a search effort involving 1,300 individuals, no wreckage was ever discovered. A Liberian tanker ship's crew reported sighting an "intensely luminous" light in the sky around the time of the flight, but the U.S. Civil Aeronautics board was unable to determine the incident's probable cause.

British South American Airways: In 1947, an aircraft carrying 11 individuals disappeared in the Andes Mountains. Over 50 years later, in 1998, Argentinian rock climbers stumbled upon engine wreckage in the Andes. Subsequently, an army expedition uncovered human remains. It was speculated that the plane had caused an avalanche when it crashed into Mount Tupangato and was buried in the snow.

Bermuda Triangle: The infamous "Devil's Triangle," an extensive region of ocean encompassing Florida, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda, gained notoriety due to a series of unexplained disappearances. Two British South American Airways passenger jets vanished in 1948 and 1949, resulting in the loss of over 51 lives. Additionally, in 1945, five American bombers conducting a training mission in the area disappeared without a trace, along with the aircraft dispatched to locate them.

Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571: In 1972, a flight bound for Santiago, Chile, carrying 45 passengers and crew crashed into the Andes mountains amid adverse weather conditions, resulting in 12 fatalities. For 72 days, authorities were unaware of any survivors. During this time, eight individuals perished in an avalanche that struck the plane's wreckage, where they sought shelter. The remaining 16 survivors resorted to cannibalism to stay alive, consuming the bodies of the deceased before their eventual discovery more than two months after vanishing from the sky.