Here is a new title for an old thread and below is the link for anyone to start or catch up with the story.
http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=13315
And to bring the story up to date but not necesarily complete, the plane may have crashed in the jungle, crashed near the Seychelles, maybe re-registered as 3X-GOM or be parted out in the dark continent. The plane was previously N844AA (c/n 20985). The following links will provide much more detailed information on the current theories and investigations. Be warned, they are long but very interesting!
http://www.flightlinemalta.com/airaccidents/N844AA
http://www.nosuchblog.blog-city.com/yet_another_missing_727_update.htm
By: Newforest - 26th December 2005 at 20:25
Amongst the stories of the aircraft being spotted as 3X-GOM on June 28 2003 in Conakry, the capital of Guinea by Canadian pilot Bob Strother (as reported by The Guardian’s correspondant in Freetown, James Astill on Monday July 7, 2003) Airliner World also reported on the story, claiming that the a/c had been tracked down somewhere, and is now flying as 5N-BGQ for AfriJet!
5N-BGQ is a 727-281F (c/n 21455) and N844AA (3X-GOM?) is a 727-223, but then they are only numbers and paperwork! 😀
By: BY767 - 26th December 2005 at 18:41
Yes it’s an incredibly strange and interesting story indeed, with so many different theories as to what happened and where the aircraft is now – some reports say it was stolen for criminal activity, some say it was taken away after money was not paid and some speculate it was stolen with the intention of using it for terrorist activities.
Amongst the stories of the aircraft being spotted as 3X-GOM on June 28 2003 in Conakry, the capital of Guinea by Canadian pilot Bob Strother (as reported by The Guardian’s correspondant in Freetown, James Astill on Monday July 7, 2003) Airliner World also reported on the story, claiming that the a/c had been tracked down somewhere, and is now flying as 5N-BGQ for AfriJet!
http://www.airliners.net/open.file?id=708373
However that is not the end of it by a long way. I’m not even sure if that information was confirmed or not – If anyone has the edition it was in please expand on that if you can!
And of course Ben Padilla is still missing – he was the American engineer apparently sent out to Africa to oversee the refurbishment of the aircraft. He hasn’t been seen since the aircraft mysteriosly took off from Luanda on May 25th 2003.
For Padilla’s family, several false alarms have brought only upset and frustration. Fresh hopes of discovering what happened were renewed when a chartered Boeing 727 crashed after take off in the west African nation of Benin, killing 111. However it turned out there had been a mixup in registration numbers.
The family’s hopes rose again when they got a tip from a private investigator that a pilot in Fargo, N.D., had been overhead saying he knew an aircraft mechanic who had seen the missing 727 in a hangar in Beirut, Lebanon. The FBI tracked down the pilot, but “from what I understand, that led to a dead end,” said Ben Padilla’s brother.
A real mystery – Nobody seems to have a definate answer as to what happened. There’s a lot of coverage on the story on the internet but none of it is conclusive, and a lot of the stories on different websites and from different sources seem to contradict each other with some saying the aircraft was found long ago and some saying it is still yet to be located.
By: Newforest - 26th December 2005 at 15:08
A very interesting read indeed ! Thanks for posting the links.
I don’t believe you read it all in 32 mins! 😀
By: SOFTLAD - 26th December 2005 at 15:06
A very interesting read indeed ! Thanks for posting the links.
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December 26, 2005 at 2:34 pm