Though the latest news from The New York Times shows computers may have misrouted Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370, the world is still riveted with its disappearance. Even Rupert Murdoch got into the conspiracy game with some off the cuff tweets postulating that the plane was stolen, spirited to Pakistan and that it is the world’s softness on Jihadists that let this all happen.
“This is a very strange event,” said aviation historian Carroll Gray on CNN. “It doesn’t lend itself to the normal sets of explanations. Things that are unsolved just sort of grab people, especially when you have the common experience of flying.”
Most of the crackpot theories floating around the Internet from elves and black magic, to cloaking devices and black holes, can probably attributed to the public’s desperate hope for any resolution that involves the lives of the passengers aboard being saved.
But some aeronautical mysteries are never solved, or remain fishy and open to conspiracy. Planes have been disappearing since the earliest days of aviation when, for instance, Edouard Bague’s Bleriot XI Monoplane failed an attempt to simply fly across the Mediterranean in 1911. But it’s once modern navigation techniques and radar come into play that these vanishings go from routine adventures gone wrong to head scratching incidents.
Here is TV Mix’s list of the most famous flight disasters that still need answers:
1. Amelia Earhart, 1937:
Of course the most famous of all time is the disappearance of the early twentieth centuries great hero, Amelia Earhart. It was the era of Charles Lindbergh and his famous solo flight across the Atlantic. In 1937 she took off in her Lockheed Electra with navigator Fred Noonan for an around the world flight and made it 22,000 miles before disappearing off Howland Island in the South Pacific. The Navy searched and theories abounded. Though Hilary Swank’s performance in 2009’s Amelia seemed to have squelched fascination for awhile.
2. British South American Airlines, 1947-49:
In 1947 a British South American Airlines jet called Star Dust vanished four minutes from landing in Santiago, Chile. A year later the airlines Star Tiger disappeared in heavy rains near Bermuda. Finally one year after that Star Arial vanished in clear skies between Bermuda and Jamaica. Though Star Dust wreckage was eventually discovered the mystery was enough to cement the idea of the Bermuda Triangle in our heads forever.
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3. Flying Tiger Line 1962:
This Lockheed L-1049H Super Constellation propeller plane chartered by the U.S. military and carrying 102 passengers was flying to Vietnam via the Philippines and disappeared. to arrive in the Philippines en route to Vietnam. Extensive searches were made in the Pacific but nothing was ever found.
4. The Moorabbin Cessna, 1978:
On a small plane’s flight over the Bass Strait from Melbourne to Tasmania in 1978 simply vanished. What made it remarkable was that the Cessna’s pilot, Frederick Valentich radioed in reports of a large craft above him and bright landing lights, calling it a “thing… just orbiting on top of me… it’s got a green light and sort of metallic, all shiny on the outside.” No signs of another craft were apparent to Moorabbin Airport’s aircraft control but after reports of the disappearance many stepped forward to report UFO sightings in the area.
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5. Faucett Airlines 1990:
A Boeing 727 headed for Miami crashed into the North Atlantic after running out of fuel. No wreckage and one of the 18 passengers or Peruvian crew members were ever found
6. Merpati Nusantara Airlines 1995:
This de Haviland Twin Otter 300 disppeared over open water between two islands in Indonesia. It had 14 passengers. No sign of it was ever recovered.
7. Helios 522, 2005:
In 2005 a flight from Cyprus to Prague went astray after pilots filed to throw the compression switch on the oxygen supply. Everyone was left unconscious as the plane continued to fly for two hours before crashing into a mountain near Athens. Not exactly a mystery but the ghostliness of the flight cruising along for hours is haunting—and possibly presages the fate of MH370.
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8. Adam Air, 2007:
The Indonesian airline Adam Air had a 737 vanish with 102 passengers on board in 2007. It took 9 months to recover the cockpit recorders.
9. Air France Flight 447, 2009:
Though some are less mysterious than others this list would be incomplete without the 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447. It left Rio de Janeiro for Paris in a big storm. It’s thought lightening played a part in its crash—but it took two years to find the plane on the ocean floor.
Meanwhile FilmOn has plenty of ways to keep up with the latest news on the search:
Check out domestic reports from the Associated Press about the investigation via FilmOn Breaking News.
Al Jazeera, meanwhile, offers international coverage of the disappearance.
China Central Television (CCTV News) offers reports from local officials involved directly in the investigation.
Press TV offers a roundup of global events, including an overview of the incident.
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And The New York Times’ World News promises to keep you up to date with all new developments:
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SOURCE: TVMix.com
