The history of aviation is littered with mysterious disappearances of many such planes while flying over the legendary Bermuda Triangle, and others have vanished only to resurface in glaciers decades later. The reasons behind these mysteries have differed too, from espionage and sabotage to simple accidents. For some, we’ll never know for sure. Below, we’ve compiled a list of some of these mysterious disappearances, including those of Amelia Earhart and MH370:-
The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has gripped the public imagination. Unanswered questions such as why the communication system was disabled, and why the aircraft apparently executed a U-turn before it disappeared have deepened the mystery. But this is not the first time a plane has gone missing. There are several more cases where planes have gone missing in thin air without leaving any traces.
Some of the missing planes very big and old, take a look ..
# In 2003, a Boeing 727-233, registered N844AA, began taxiing along the runway at Quatro de Fevereiro Airport in Luanda, Angola with no communication between the crew and the tower.
# A cargo plane belonging to Varig Brazilian Airlines disappeared in January 1979 just 30 minutes after it took off from Narita International Airport in Tokyo, on board were 153 paintings valued at more than $1.2 million (£700,000). Neither the plane, its crew or nor the paintings have been seen since.
# One of the most enduring mysteries in aviation history is what happened to the Flying Tiger Line Flight 739 in 1932. The US military flight carrying 90 military personnel took off from Guam, in the western Pacific, but never arrived at its destination in the Philippines. The plane issued no distress call and no wreckage has ever been found.
# Several planes disappeared in the region between Florida, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda in the 1940s in mysteries that have been the focus of intense interest from conspiracy theorists and aeronautical historians ever since. Two British South American Airways passenger jets vanished in the area in 1948 and 1949. Fifty-one passengers and crew were lost in the two incidents, one involving a Star Tiger plane and the other a Star Ariel plane.
# In 2009 a flight from Rio De Janeiro to Paris crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing 228 passengers and crew. After a day of searching wreckage was spotted and parts of the plane, including the black boxes, were eventually recovered. But the bodies of 74 passengers were never located.
# Stunt pilot Art Scholl crashed and disappeared without trace when his Pitt S-2 camera plane crashed during filming for a scene for the Hollywood film Top Gun. Scholl had intentionally put the plane into a flat spin to film a scene for the movie, but the aircraft never recovered from the manoeuvre and plunged into the ocean.
# Aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart disappeared in her Lockheed Model 10 Electra somewhere over the central Pacific Ocean in 1937 while attempting to circumnavigate the globe. In spite of a multi-million pound search effort, no remnants of her plane have ever been found.
