Were it not for the disappearance of MH370, one would have thought it essentially impossible for a passenger jet to just disappear.
And while it’s been 5 years since the disappearance of MH370, there’s another plane that’s been missing for the past 16 years.
Sometime around sunset, on the 25th of May 2003, a Boeing 727 taxied on to the runway at the Quatro Fevereiro Airport in Luanda, Angola. It hadn’t been cleared for a flight, it didn’t communicate with the tower, its lights and transponder were off. It moved erratically on the runway, but managed to take off, following a southwestern trajectory over the Atlantic.
The plane, a Boeing 727-223, was registered as N844AA.
N844AA was 28 years old at the time, and had in its glorious past been owned by American Airlines. It was still a good plane, but had been grounded at the airport for over a year due to several hitches.
A Flying Tanker
How it found itself in Luanda starts with a South African, Keith Irwin. Ever the entrepreneur, he’d won a contract supplying fuel to diamond mines in Angola, where decades of civil war, which ended in April 2002, meant there were hardly any roads. A flying tanker was the only viable option.
This was a joint venture which failed, leaving Irwin with fuel tanks but no plane to fit the tanks in. He also had a crew of six with no work in sight.
As it were, Aerospace Sales and Leasing had a Boeing 727 to lease, and Irwin made a down payment to its owner, Maury Joseph, and took possession of the plane. The plane left American shores on February 28 2002, but the crew arrived in Luanda on March 14.
Its hitches had begun, as the plane was racking up airport charges everyday it remained parked. For perspective, the plane had been purchased for $1 million, yet owed the airport $220,000 upon landing.
What followed was a frustrating wait by the crew, as the plane was grounded due to irregularities spotted by authorities. For one, it lacked a high frequency radio. A quick fix using a radio from a Cessna had to be removed, as well as another attempt to install a military radio on the plane.
Furthermore, it allegedly lacked the proper paperwork ascertaining its conversion into a tanker. For this and other unlisted irregularities, the plane was banned from overflying Angola.
Irwin had found another supply job, and his crew, now four men after the departure of two, made 17 flights for this new job. Meanwhile, N844AA remained grounded.
By April, when the civil war ended, the foreign crew had left, and the supply jobs were being jostled for by many other people. Irwin’s partners were claiming ownership of N844AA, yet Joseph had not yet received the full pay.
In the same month, Irwin realized he was being trailed by someone; he left Angola the morning after an attempted break-in at his hotel room.
N844AA was abandoned.
Ben Padilla
Very quickly it became a derelict junk, whose only valuable component was its engines. Joseph had found a buyer for these, and sought the services of an aircraft mechanic he had previously worked with to service them.
Joseph sent Benjamin Padilla to work on the plane in April 2003, and in a month, it had become airworthy.
As had been planned, Padilla was left with the task of hiring a pilot and a co-pilot so that the plane could be flown out to South Africa once all airport charges had been cleared. The pilots were hired from Air Gemini, which Padilla also worked for.
It had also been arranged that, on the day before the flight, the plane would be taken to the runway so that all engines could be run for a full system check.
On the evening of May 25th, 2003, Benjamin Padilla boarded the plane, followed by his assistant, John Mikel Mutantu. No other person was seen boarding the plane.
The Boeing 727 is manned by a 3-person flight crew, and while Padilla was a pilot, he wasn’t trained or qualified to fly these passenger jets.
Yet somehow, with only two people seen boarding, the plane took off into the sunset, never to be seen again.
All sorts of narratives have been issued to try and explain this, but its disappearance remains a mystery.
Was it shot down by the Angolan air force? This after all was less than two years after the September 11 attacks.
Was it an attempt at insurance fraud? To claim the plane was stolen?
Was it a means to avoid paying the accrued charges? Might the plane have been landed elsewhere and stripped of parts?
Were there other people hidden in the plane, who may have coerced the two mechanics into taking off?
Well, the FBI closed the case in 2005, leaving it unresolved.
It may have crashed into the Atlantic, and the ocean keeps its secrets too well sometimes.
Africa Global News Publication
