Man has long been fascinated with flying, and thanks to modern technology, that dream has become a reality. Still, the privilege doesn’t come without a price. Both man and machine are fallible, and even minor mistakes can have deadly consequences. While we try to learn from each catastrophe and better our equipment, there are some crashes that leave us scratching our heads over what went wrong.
9 Flight 19
While Flight 19 began as a routine training mission for the US Navy, it ended in six planes vanishing into thin air and sparked the legend of the Bermuda Triangle.
[amazon asin=0071452176&template=*lrc ad (left)]The five Navy Avenger planes that made up Flight 19 (led by Charles Taylor) took off from Fort Lauderdale, Florida on December 5, 1945. The weather was clear, and an experienced flight instructor was with the team. But 90 minutes into the exercise, the pilots became disoriented and couldn’t recognize the landmarks below. According to radio transmissions, Taylor’s compass malfunctioned, and it appeared he was confusing the Florida Keys with the Bahamas. The command tower tried to direct Taylor back to Fort Lauderdale, and his students begged him to go west, but Taylor continued to lead them in erratic directions and apparently farther out to sea. Eventually, the tower lost contact with the five planes, and none of them were seen or heard from again. Eerily, a rescue plane also went missing that night while hunting for Taylor’s team. Many suppose it exploded in midair, since it simply dropped off the radar.[amazon asin=0956072321&template=*lrc ad (right)]
One of the most curious things about this incident is that Taylor, without explanation, asked to be excused from the day’s exercises. The Navy denied his request, and he was forced to go ahead with the fateful mission. What was Taylor’s reason for not wanting to fly that day?
8 EgyptAir Flight 990
On Halloween Day of 1999, EgyptAir Flight 990 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean—killing all 217 aboard. The Egyptian Civil Aviation Authority (ECAA) investigated the crash, but because they had limited resources and the [amazon asin=0785263543&template=*lrc ad (left)]accident occurred in international waters, they asked if the US National Transportation Safety Board would take over. The NTSB was happy to—until the preliminary examination suggested foul play, after which they suggested the case be sent over to the FBI. The Egyptians staunchly refused and insisted the NTSB continue with the investigation. However, when the evidence of a criminal act continued to mount, the Egyptians decided they were capable of handling things after all, and launched their own examination.
As you might expect, the American NTSB and the Egyptian ECAA came to two different conclusions. The US determined that the copilot was suicidal and deliberately took down the plane for personal, unknown reasons. The Egyptians chalked the incident up to mechanical failures. Neither explanation satisfied conspiracy theorists, who touted ideas of terrorism and plots to kill the 33 members of the Egyptian General Staff who were on board.
Although we may never know exactly what happened, the final exchanges on the flight’s voice recorder give us a pretty good idea. The pilot was recorded saying, “What is this? What is this? Did you shut the engines?” [amazon asin=0821758292&template=*lrc ad (right)]Meanwhile, the copilot was repeating, “I rely on God.”
7 Star Dust
Star Dust was a civilian version of the Lancaster bomber and was registered to the British South American Airways. In 1947, it was traveling from Buenos Aires to Santiago, Chile but disappeared over the Andes minutes before its scheduled landing. In his last moments, the aircraft’s radio operator transmitted one final, puzzling Morse code message: “STENDEC.”
There was no trace of Stardust, and after extensively searching the supposed crash site, investigators concluded they would never know what happened to the aircraft. Fifty years later, hikers discovered the plane’s wreckage in a melting glacier. Star Dust went off course and, in low visibility, mistakenly descended into the cloud-covered mountain range.
While finding the plane finally put to rest speculations of sabotage and alien abduction, the meaning of “STENDEC” remains a mystery.
