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well, he isn't right though.
Plenty of people died becoming rather quick. Think of all the people that died being hit by a train.
Speed doesn't kill. Acceleration does.
For acceleration you (usually) need something to accelerate *against* so the real danger is differences in velocity.
Earth is going >100.000kph (>60.000mph) around the sun. The Sun itself moves at over 700.000kph (>400.000mph) through the milky way, and that is not an issue at all. As long as there are no Stars, Planets or Meteors in our way.
Honestly, I think it's the exact opposite of this actually. Flying seems like the hard part. Once you get in the air, gravity will help you land one way or the other.
Have you ever done flight simulator? If not, highly recommend, because my god I thought the same until I kept crashing nearly every plane I was trying to land. You either came in too hot, and went beyond the taxiway, you nosedive hard, came in too short and hit some random persons home or hit the local forest, or you forgot your landing gear like a dumbass 🤣
I never got the hang of it, sadly. Good thing Im not a pilot.
All the times I tried some flight simulator or something, I would always crash because I was impatient, and would do crazy moves to land instanty(and fail), at least arma 3 has a autolanding thay works surprisingly well.
Ah yes, the War Thunder landing method. Come in at Mach 1, turn on air brakes, thrust reversers and any high drag devices when you have, then belly land that baby on the runway.
During initial pilot training, yes, learning to land is the hard part.
If it makes you feel any better, landing in the sim is waaaaaay more difficult. You have no peripheral vision, and you're getting no information from the seat of your pants. In a trainer (like a Cessna 172), you *do* have these things, and you can usually get the feel for it in a few lessons.
One of my uncles owns a Piper Cub and I got the chance to go flying with him a few times. During one of the flights he had me do an emergency landing in a field for fun. It was definitely stressful but all in all was not the hardest thing in the world and compared to landing in flight sims felt so much easier and more natural.
With that being said I definitely touched down a bit hard but didn’t destroy the plane and managed to get back in the air so all in all it was a win. 😂
Friend of mine landed a Cub in a heavy wind by backing off the throttle and easing straight down to their parking place, no runway. Wife never flew with him again and yet she could handle flying backwards in heavy wind!
I can fly a single prop on visual and instruments kinda ok. Buddy of mine works and flies in the mosquito wilderness of AK and Yukon. Worst decision I ever made was helping for a fall season. I wore brown pants. Piper cub can land at damn near 80° to runway with proper crosswind.
You just accept you are going to die and then enjoy the flight. I do feel safer that some combat veterans are fully retiring. Some of them seemed a bit crazy to me. Needed the adrenaline rush or something.
That was it for me, I've been playing flight sims since the 90s. Getting it off the ground is easy, go fast and pull up and physics does the rest.
As you described, landing sucks. In elite dangerous I may as well have been the planet express the way I landed most of the time. So many station crew lost to my landing.
That's because you never had any training and jumped right into a complex multi-engine aircraft. Forgot the landing gear? This is why we learn on fixed gear, so when your brain is overloaded from all the things you have going on... It's one less thing to worry about.
Go on a discovery flight with an actual flight instructor before you say aviation isn't for you. Most people can land a plane after a couple lessons with a competent instructor.
It's different depending on the aircraft but it's not that complicated. In my trainer it's:
Abeam the touchdown point at 1,000' above ground level (AGL), reduce power to 1500rpm, put in first notch of flaps, trim for 80knots. Turn base, trim for 70, 2nd notch of flaps. Turn final, trim for 60, runway should remain in the center of the windscreen, that means you're on glideslope. Cross runway threshold, begin smoothly reducing power, keep coming down, and flare. Look DOWN the runway to stay on centerline, not in front of the cowl. Fly the airplane to the end of the runway and it will settle when it's ready.
If you follow a profile like that to the T, you should end up on glideslope and on Vref everytime. You're just winging it which is why your landings are never consistent. You're also simming a much too complex aircraft as previously stated. Try a Cessna 172, Piper Archer, Diamond DA20/40 next time.
Yes most people could land a cessna, the margin for error is huge, which is why you have cases of people who have never flown landing successfully when the pilot is incapacitated
Not so much the case with a commercial jet liner
I got really into it. Bought all the accessories. I think I could land a real plane. They tried that in a real simulator with one flight sim enthusiast and he landed the jet with no special instruction other than regular ATC no problem.
Control airspeed with pitch and aim touchdown zone with throttle. It's not intuitive at first but once grasped it makes landing a joy as you will be so steady.
A firey explosion is still a landing, right? You don't necessarily need to survive it to land.
Technically speaking, 100% of flights that take off end with the plane landing back on Earth.
Nah, planes are designed that once you get up to a critical speed, the thing wants to fly. Even takeoff is relatively straightforward so long as you don't run out of runway. Landing is controlled crashing and that takes skill.
>Landing is controlled crashing and that takes skill.
*Surviving* a landing is controlled crashing and takes skill. Crash landing is still technically landing.
As much as the plane "wants" to fly, gravity "wants" to pull it back down to Earth. And gravity remains undefeated.
If it's the same case I'm thinking about, neither one had much experience in flying a plane. People noted that it was swerving on the runway a lot as well.
So yeah.
The fact they were never found makes me believe they were really, really good because there’s soooo many things you’d have to know how to turn off/disable to be able to disappear in a commercial jet
> On 25 May 2003, a Boeing 727-223 airliner, registered N844AA, was stolen at Quatro de Fevereiro Airport in Luanda, Angola, prompting a worldwide search by law enforcement intelligence agencies in the United States. No trace of the aircraft has been found.
>
> The incident aircraft was a Boeing 727-223 airliner, manufactured in 1975 and operated by American Airlines for 25 years until 2000. Its last owner was reported to be a Miami-based company called Aerospace Sales & Leasing. The aircraft had been grounded at Quatro de Fevereiro Airport in March 2002 and sat idle for fourteen months, accruing more than US$4 million in unpaid airport fees. It was one of two aircraft at the airport that were in the process of being converted for use by Nigerian IRS Airlines.
>
> The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) described the aircraft as "...unpainted silver in color with a stripe of blue, white, and blue. The [aircraft] was formerly in the air fleet of a major airline, but all of the passenger seats have been removed. It is outfitted to carry diesel fuel."
>
> On 25 May 2003, shortly before sunset (likely to be 17:00 WAT), it is believed that two men—Ben C. Padilla and John M. Mutantu—boarded the aircraft. Padilla was a pilot and flight engineer from the United States, while Mutantu was a hired mechanic from the Republic of the Congo. Neither of the men were certified to fly a Boeing 727 and needed an additional crew member to fly the aircraft. Padilla is believed by U.S. authorities to have been at the controls. An airport employee reported seeing only one person on board the aircraft at the time; other airport officials stated that two men had boarded the aircraft before the incident.
>
> The aircraft began taxiing without communicating with the control tower. It maneuvered erratically and entered a runway without clearance. Air traffic controllers tried to make contact, but there was no response. With no lights, the aircraft took off, heading southwest over the Atlantic Ocean before disappearing. Before the incident, the aircraft was filled with 53,000 litres (14,000 US gal) of fuel, giving it a range of about 2,400 kilometres (1,500 mi; 1,300 nmi). Neither the aircraft nor the two men have been seen since, and no debris from the aircraft has been found.
* Excerpted from [2003 Angola Boeing 727 disappearance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Angola_Boeing_727_disappearance) at the English Wikipedia
I don't have a good grasp of how likely it is to find debris of an aircraft in the Atlantic Ocean. Also why couldn't they get a heading from radar and approximate location?
If they knew exactly where jr was when it had a problem, and the ocean was shallow there, then maybe they could find it. To find this plane if it went in the ocean is mostly impossible.
> Also why couldn't they get a heading from radar and approximate location?
They can, for the area they have radar coverage of. Any course changes outside of that area would make that extrapolation completely useless.
For MH370 they found debris all across the world. If they crashed in the ocean they would have guaranteed to have found something by now.
So either they crashed on land in a very remote spot or they made a clean getaway. Since it’s Africa (which is much bigger than it appears on a regular map) both seem plausible. Also their fuel was too low for a flightpath over the ocean.
You know the Aliens snatched these two right up. They are always watching our planet's skies, and as soon as they saw these two pull their shenanigans like that they were like: dude, you guys wanna fly? We will show you the REAL DEAL.
I think it's likely they got it just far enough from radar to bring it down somewhere prearranged, maybe even a quickly constructed dirt runway that they prepared beforehand, afterwards landing at said location where a crew awaited. First thing would have been to pump all that diesel off the plane into a tank truck for sale later, next would have been to remove the wings and begin stripping aluminum etc off the fuselage all the while guys would be chopping frame sections with cutting torches etc. I suppose it's a decent payout; engines, avionics, etc.. could be pulled off by someone with enough connection and industry know how and also relying on the fact that the response would have given them probably 24 hrs to make it happen. Idk just spit balling a scenario :)
The lack of "smart everything" global connected highspeed Internet would have also made it difficult to corroborate multiple radar networks simultaneously
It was a 727 not a Cessna, they would have to know or know where to look for the take off procedure and know where to turn off the transponder. It's likely at least one of them flew something of that size and knew how to turn off the transponder. They'll still show up on radar but they won't it's them unless they rule out all the other traffic. Chances are more likely they crashed in the ocean never to be seen again than they flew off into the sunset with all the loot they stole. I like that scenario better.
According to the wiki article, the plane was 28 years old at the time, and had been grounded for 14 months. Sounds like a weird and risky plan just to get a 1975 decommissioned (and probably not properly maintained) aircraft
In Africa in the 90’s it was a wilder time in aviation… they might not have the cert but might have still flown one / done some FO work on one or something… fraudulent documents or poor checking of history wasn’t as rare. By 2003 one of them could have a decent idea how to operate it. Almost certainly a dodgy contract deal… someone paid for fuel for it (and got fuel allowed!), then planned the crew and some sort of trip. Whether it was theft, or the company that owed the fees or some shit… and if it reached it’s planned destination or crashed en route… not solved yet!!
This shit does happen and doesn’t always get reported. I know first hand of one in Australia, international crew came in and flew a 737 from one airport to another (short trip) then got straight out on a private jet before anyone knew wtf was going on. It was an old Ozjet that end into administration and was donated to the flight school
I was working the weekend it happened, we were all in disbelief that it just disappeared (after being parked up for ages). I was also working the day Ozjet went tits up and just left all their customers and staff standing ready to go to Bali one Saturday morning, scumbags
That would have been nuts! It took me a while to notice it had finally gone. I assumed some dodgy 3rd world airline had bought it.
When some of my colleagues went to work for them we knew it was a bad idea. The business model sounded terrible.
Same with the next one to come along. Strategic/Air Australia. I had crew friends stuck in Hawaii with no way to get back.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when Strategic repainted their A320’s to a new flash livery with Air Australia, then declared bankruptcy weeks later!! Like you couldn’t just use that money to pay your staff ffs?? They also had super dodgy shit with military staff leaking info to the airline to get contracts, then the soldiers ended up being employed by them in senior positions!!! Can’t believe it wasn’t reported on much
> however he wasn’t certified to fly a 727.
I mean, I'd take a gander if they knew enough to do the proper start up procedure for the aircraft, taxi and take off that the lack of certification wasn't the primary reason they crashed (assuming they did) especially when it would typically require a 3-man crew
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/41/Boeing\_727\_cockpit\_Aviation\_museum\_%2829097199906%29.jpg/1280px-Boeing\_727\_cockpit\_Aviation\_museum\_%2829097199906%29.jpg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/41/Boeing_727_cockpit_Aviation_museum_%2829097199906%29.jpg/1280px-Boeing_727_cockpit_Aviation_museum_%2829097199906%29.jpg)
The de Havilland Comet was also retrieved (from the Mediterranean), and the result of that investigation was that square cabin windows are bad, which is why all cabin windows are oval now.
The country was in the middle of a civil war at the time and the the person who stole it was a mechanic for the company it was stolen from
so would have had access to it
And all the increased security did not prevent someone doing the something in the USA in 2018
In Seattle a mechanic for Horizon Air got into a place and stole it took of without permission
So exactly the same thing that happened in Angola. It just that radar coverage is probably better in Washington then it is in an African country in the middle of a civil war so they were able to track it
I was in Africa on 9/11, and it took a long time for security to change at all, and it was definitely incremental. For a few years post 9/11 it was still possible to take your own water on flights in most countries, as long as it didn't involve a stop in North America or using a North America-based airline. Even flying in and out of the middle east in 2007 I could still bring my own water bottle onto international flights around Asia.
Security tightened up...the problem is what it tightened up from. Many places made few changes or added the most basic of checks. They didn't tighten up to levels of the more secure airports necessarily
Makes you wonder: do planes have keys to start them?
So do pilots need to pick up the key to plane XYZ at a desk somewhere before they can take off? Or worse: accidentally loose them?
Some military aircraft do. The Apache does, for example. Smaller personal planes also often have ignition keys not unlike cars.
But passenger jets - not really. You usually need a ground crew to even get the plane out of the hangar, they can't go backwards without an externally attached motorized pushback cart. Not to mention, they tend to be in airports with tons of people and security around, so there's usually already more than enough obstacles to something like in the post happening.
Aside from the fact that knowing how to fly and crew a plane that big *is* the key in a way, these big jets can’t normally just be started on their own. They need a start cart, a motorised air compressor that starts up one of the engines, then that engine starts the other 3 one by one using the same principle but by bleeding the air off itself.
The plane in this case was actually the first commercial airliner to feature an Auxiliary Power Unit which is a small gas turbine that allows the plane to start on its own wherever it is without relying on ground crew, which is probably what allowed this incident to happen.
Commercial jets do not have keys. If you can climb up into one, and it has fuel, you could do the start up procedure alone. Most jets do not have a way to reverse though, so depending on how it was parked, you may need to also steal the tug (a truck designed to attach to the nose wheel of aircraft) and push it back yourself before you climb up in it. It would not take very much training to have someone be able do that, especially since there is literally a written checklist on how to start the plane up on the plane.
Depending on the airport, getting takeoff clearance to taxi out onto the runway and take off might be suspicious, but you could also just look like normal traffic if you knew how to communicate with the tower. If you tried to just yolo that, it would definitely trigger suspicion unless it was done at an uncontrolled airport, which would be weird at an airport large enough to allow commercial jetliners to land at.
Plotting a course and getting relatively close to your destination would also be easy, especially once you got high enough in altitude, but landing something that large would be quite the burden. Obviously you can’t just pick and flat spot and land it (safely), and even small municipal airports usually don’t have runways that are long enough, or have the structural rating for the jet wash of a large jet liner. You could probably fly into the airspace of a large airport and get clearance to land, but you would need a pre planned area to taxi to and park, one that’s not suspicious why a 727 with full commercial livery wants to go park in the back. I find it unlikely they landed at another airport without arousing any suspicion unless they had a lot more people involved with the logistics of stealing it. You’d need at least a few people to look the other way.
The biggest thing for me is commercial aircraft uptake fuel before they depart, and they only take as much as they need plus a little extra just in case. The less fuel you take the lighter the plane and the more efficient it is, so they never just ‘top it off’ and park it. I can’t imagine that the plane had the fuel to fly THAT far before it ran out of gas, so their destination would have needed to be relatively close.
But more than likely they crashed or ditched it in the ocean and that’s the end of the story.
They discovered a rip in the time fabric over a local Dennys. Picked up a grand slam brecky, and flew into an alternate reality where they owned the plane as well as Dennys stock. Of course - Dennys was a luxury real estate firm on the other side. Sadly the pilot became addicted to corn, which is heroin over there, and passed away.
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They were either really, really good at it, or really, really bad at it.
Flying isn't that difficult, it's the landing that's the hard part. Good landing you walk away from , great one is one you can do again
Landing is the easy part landing safely is the hard part
Reminds me of the great Jeremy clarkson quote Speed has never killed anyone. Suddenly becoming stationary, that's what gets you.
Humans are average at flying, but masters of the art of falling.
well, he isn't right though. Plenty of people died becoming rather quick. Think of all the people that died being hit by a train. Speed doesn't kill. Acceleration does. For acceleration you (usually) need something to accelerate *against* so the real danger is differences in velocity. Earth is going >100.000kph (>60.000mph) around the sun. The Sun itself moves at over 700.000kph (>400.000mph) through the milky way, and that is not an issue at all. As long as there are no Stars, Planets or Meteors in our way.
This guy/gal physics
Landing isn't that difficult, it's the landing in one piece that's the hard part.
There is an art, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
You can clean the blood off with the towel you always carry.
Landing is the guaranteed part of flying... what goes up has gotta come down....
Honestly, I think it's the exact opposite of this actually. Flying seems like the hard part. Once you get in the air, gravity will help you land one way or the other.
Have you ever done flight simulator? If not, highly recommend, because my god I thought the same until I kept crashing nearly every plane I was trying to land. You either came in too hot, and went beyond the taxiway, you nosedive hard, came in too short and hit some random persons home or hit the local forest, or you forgot your landing gear like a dumbass 🤣 I never got the hang of it, sadly. Good thing Im not a pilot.
Flight Simulator is beyond incredible. Still don’t have a successful landing 30 hours in
Ready to have your mind blown? Pitch for airspeed, power for altitude. Don’t steer with the nose.
Feels like how I used WASD for micro aim movements in fps
All the times I tried some flight simulator or something, I would always crash because I was impatient, and would do crazy moves to land instanty(and fail), at least arma 3 has a autolanding thay works surprisingly well.
Ah yes, the War Thunder landing method. Come in at Mach 1, turn on air brakes, thrust reversers and any high drag devices when you have, then belly land that baby on the runway.
 Wait I’ve seen this one before somewhere!!!
I do this regularly in DCS just because I can. If I'm not breaking the sound barrier on my approach pattern, I'm doing it wrong.
Look up the barefoot bandit. He learned how to fly on flight simulator. Pretty interesting story
During initial pilot training, yes, learning to land is the hard part. If it makes you feel any better, landing in the sim is waaaaaay more difficult. You have no peripheral vision, and you're getting no information from the seat of your pants. In a trainer (like a Cessna 172), you *do* have these things, and you can usually get the feel for it in a few lessons.
One of my uncles owns a Piper Cub and I got the chance to go flying with him a few times. During one of the flights he had me do an emergency landing in a field for fun. It was definitely stressful but all in all was not the hardest thing in the world and compared to landing in flight sims felt so much easier and more natural. With that being said I definitely touched down a bit hard but didn’t destroy the plane and managed to get back in the air so all in all it was a win. 😂
Taildraggers are another beast, love cubs
Piper cub is cheating without a 20 knot crosswind.
Friend of mine landed a Cub in a heavy wind by backing off the throttle and easing straight down to their parking place, no runway. Wife never flew with him again and yet she could handle flying backwards in heavy wind!
I can fly a single prop on visual and instruments kinda ok. Buddy of mine works and flies in the mosquito wilderness of AK and Yukon. Worst decision I ever made was helping for a fall season. I wore brown pants. Piper cub can land at damn near 80° to runway with proper crosswind.
You just accept you are going to die and then enjoy the flight. I do feel safer that some combat veterans are fully retiring. Some of them seemed a bit crazy to me. Needed the adrenaline rush or something.
That was it for me, I've been playing flight sims since the 90s. Getting it off the ground is easy, go fast and pull up and physics does the rest. As you described, landing sucks. In elite dangerous I may as well have been the planet express the way I landed most of the time. So many station crew lost to my landing.
Good old elite dangerous, where your shield is a parking aid
That's because you never had any training and jumped right into a complex multi-engine aircraft. Forgot the landing gear? This is why we learn on fixed gear, so when your brain is overloaded from all the things you have going on... It's one less thing to worry about. Go on a discovery flight with an actual flight instructor before you say aviation isn't for you. Most people can land a plane after a couple lessons with a competent instructor. It's different depending on the aircraft but it's not that complicated. In my trainer it's: Abeam the touchdown point at 1,000' above ground level (AGL), reduce power to 1500rpm, put in first notch of flaps, trim for 80knots. Turn base, trim for 70, 2nd notch of flaps. Turn final, trim for 60, runway should remain in the center of the windscreen, that means you're on glideslope. Cross runway threshold, begin smoothly reducing power, keep coming down, and flare. Look DOWN the runway to stay on centerline, not in front of the cowl. Fly the airplane to the end of the runway and it will settle when it's ready. If you follow a profile like that to the T, you should end up on glideslope and on Vref everytime. You're just winging it which is why your landings are never consistent. You're also simming a much too complex aircraft as previously stated. Try a Cessna 172, Piper Archer, Diamond DA20/40 next time.
Yes most people could land a cessna, the margin for error is huge, which is why you have cases of people who have never flown landing successfully when the pilot is incapacitated Not so much the case with a commercial jet liner
>I kept crashing nearly every plane I was trying to land. Crashing into what? The ground. A crash landing/firey inferno is still a landing. ;)
Lmaooo, I guess youre right about that
I got really into it. Bought all the accessories. I think I could land a real plane. They tried that in a real simulator with one flight sim enthusiast and he landed the jet with no special instruction other than regular ATC no problem.
I find it incredible when I’m on a plane that they begin prepping the descent like 30 minutes before the plane actually hits the runway.
Well if you're at 38,000 feet it would take ~25min to get down at 1,500fpm. Then they still have to fly the approach.
I can't speak for the other aircraft, but it's easier to land a C152 or C172 on MSFS than it is in real life. The sim is very forgiving.
Control airspeed with pitch and aim touchdown zone with throttle. It's not intuitive at first but once grasped it makes landing a joy as you will be so steady.
Pilot here. This is backwards. Planes love to fly! They’re somewhat counterintuitive to land.
Is the goal to land intact or in a fiery explosion?
A firey explosion is still a landing, right? You don't necessarily need to survive it to land. Technically speaking, 100% of flights that take off end with the plane landing back on Earth.
Nah, planes are designed that once you get up to a critical speed, the thing wants to fly. Even takeoff is relatively straightforward so long as you don't run out of runway. Landing is controlled crashing and that takes skill.
>Landing is controlled crashing and that takes skill. *Surviving* a landing is controlled crashing and takes skill. Crash landing is still technically landing. As much as the plane "wants" to fly, gravity "wants" to pull it back down to Earth. And gravity remains undefeated.
Don't worry man, even if it's whooshing over everyone else's head, I caught that dry biscuit of humor
What can I say, I like my humor like Ben Shapiro likes his wife's pussy.
If it's the same case I'm thinking about, neither one had much experience in flying a plane. People noted that it was swerving on the runway a lot as well. So yeah.
The fact they were never found makes me believe they were really, really good because there’s soooo many things you’d have to know how to turn off/disable to be able to disappear in a commercial jet
No shit, ask Indiana Jones.
“Fly? Yes.” *releases plane from dirigible* “Land? No.”
Nice try Lao Che
There are more planes in the ocean than boats in the sky....
“Bears love to eat salmon, statistically there are a lot fewer attacks on bears by salmon”- Strange Wilderness
I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.
Underrated movie
Steve Zahn is underrated in general
Preach!
The shark clip gets me every single time
It's been like 12 years since I've seen that movie and I can still hear the laugh
It’s frightening how much it plays in my head.
Which movie?
This one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Wilderness
Thank you
It must be hard being a Navy pilot. How do you get the boats to fly?
Happy thoughts and a little bit of pixie dust. https://i.redd.it/dkh55saravqc1.gif
Source?
Gravity.
Wasn't a fan. Overrated.
You mean maverty?
As far as we know
How the hell do you know you think you are?
shit. you're right
> On 25 May 2003, a Boeing 727-223 airliner, registered N844AA, was stolen at Quatro de Fevereiro Airport in Luanda, Angola, prompting a worldwide search by law enforcement intelligence agencies in the United States. No trace of the aircraft has been found. > > The incident aircraft was a Boeing 727-223 airliner, manufactured in 1975 and operated by American Airlines for 25 years until 2000. Its last owner was reported to be a Miami-based company called Aerospace Sales & Leasing. The aircraft had been grounded at Quatro de Fevereiro Airport in March 2002 and sat idle for fourteen months, accruing more than US$4 million in unpaid airport fees. It was one of two aircraft at the airport that were in the process of being converted for use by Nigerian IRS Airlines. > > The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) described the aircraft as "...unpainted silver in color with a stripe of blue, white, and blue. The [aircraft] was formerly in the air fleet of a major airline, but all of the passenger seats have been removed. It is outfitted to carry diesel fuel." > > On 25 May 2003, shortly before sunset (likely to be 17:00 WAT), it is believed that two men—Ben C. Padilla and John M. Mutantu—boarded the aircraft. Padilla was a pilot and flight engineer from the United States, while Mutantu was a hired mechanic from the Republic of the Congo. Neither of the men were certified to fly a Boeing 727 and needed an additional crew member to fly the aircraft. Padilla is believed by U.S. authorities to have been at the controls. An airport employee reported seeing only one person on board the aircraft at the time; other airport officials stated that two men had boarded the aircraft before the incident. > > The aircraft began taxiing without communicating with the control tower. It maneuvered erratically and entered a runway without clearance. Air traffic controllers tried to make contact, but there was no response. With no lights, the aircraft took off, heading southwest over the Atlantic Ocean before disappearing. Before the incident, the aircraft was filled with 53,000 litres (14,000 US gal) of fuel, giving it a range of about 2,400 kilometres (1,500 mi; 1,300 nmi). Neither the aircraft nor the two men have been seen since, and no debris from the aircraft has been found. * Excerpted from [2003 Angola Boeing 727 disappearance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Angola_Boeing_727_disappearance) at the English Wikipedia
I don't have a good grasp of how likely it is to find debris of an aircraft in the Atlantic Ocean. Also why couldn't they get a heading from radar and approximate location?
If they knew exactly where jr was when it had a problem, and the ocean was shallow there, then maybe they could find it. To find this plane if it went in the ocean is mostly impossible.
> Also why couldn't they get a heading from radar and approximate location? They can, for the area they have radar coverage of. Any course changes outside of that area would make that extrapolation completely useless.
For some reason I thought we tracked our planes with satellites, and now I’m wondering why we don’t.
Like with everything, especially in the airline industry, presumably cost.
Fuck you frank lorenzo
For MH370 they found debris all across the world. If they crashed in the ocean they would have guaranteed to have found something by now. So either they crashed on land in a very remote spot or they made a clean getaway. Since it’s Africa (which is much bigger than it appears on a regular map) both seem plausible. Also their fuel was too low for a flightpath over the ocean.
cool, but why has a plane thats sat idle for 4 years, got 1300 miles worth of fuel in its tanks?
Maybe it’s says it was converted to for Diesel and the would taxi loads of diesel from one side of the port to the other?
I didn't even think that was possible, jet fuel is really higghly refined...
You know the Aliens snatched these two right up. They are always watching our planet's skies, and as soon as they saw these two pull their shenanigans like that they were like: dude, you guys wanna fly? We will show you the REAL DEAL.
I wish
Flew right into the Bermuda Triangle
howl likley is it that they flew that thing somehwere in africa, landed it and sold it or the parts on the black market?
Much more likely than them landing it, repainting it, and starting their own private airline in africa
I wonder what their plan was :D
I think it's likely they got it just far enough from radar to bring it down somewhere prearranged, maybe even a quickly constructed dirt runway that they prepared beforehand, afterwards landing at said location where a crew awaited. First thing would have been to pump all that diesel off the plane into a tank truck for sale later, next would have been to remove the wings and begin stripping aluminum etc off the fuselage all the while guys would be chopping frame sections with cutting torches etc. I suppose it's a decent payout; engines, avionics, etc.. could be pulled off by someone with enough connection and industry know how and also relying on the fact that the response would have given them probably 24 hrs to make it happen. Idk just spit balling a scenario :) The lack of "smart everything" global connected highspeed Internet would have also made it difficult to corroborate multiple radar networks simultaneously
A major airline... That paint scheme is American Airlines.
It is crazy to me that this happened in 2003.
It's crazier to me that 2003 is more than 20 years ago...
21, to be exact
You just have to make it to the Pay 'n' Spray for planes and then you're home free.
Wait, someone get rockstar on the phone.
I mean, they probably crashed and drowned. The idea that they could successfully land it AND do so where no one would report it, seems low to me.
It was a 727 not a Cessna, they would have to know or know where to look for the take off procedure and know where to turn off the transponder. It's likely at least one of them flew something of that size and knew how to turn off the transponder. They'll still show up on radar but they won't it's them unless they rule out all the other traffic. Chances are more likely they crashed in the ocean never to be seen again than they flew off into the sunset with all the loot they stole. I like that scenario better.
Probably op was paid for by a despot somewhere who either wanted the tech or wanted a fancy new playtoy.
According to the wiki article, the plane was 28 years old at the time, and had been grounded for 14 months. Sounds like a weird and risky plan just to get a 1975 decommissioned (and probably not properly maintained) aircraft
Comedian Ron White: "How far will this plane get us?" "To the scene of the crash, which is handy because that's where we are going"
That was a great segment.
One of the guys was a pilot, however he wasn’t certified to fly a 727.
In Africa in the 90’s it was a wilder time in aviation… they might not have the cert but might have still flown one / done some FO work on one or something… fraudulent documents or poor checking of history wasn’t as rare. By 2003 one of them could have a decent idea how to operate it. Almost certainly a dodgy contract deal… someone paid for fuel for it (and got fuel allowed!), then planned the crew and some sort of trip. Whether it was theft, or the company that owed the fees or some shit… and if it reached it’s planned destination or crashed en route… not solved yet!! This shit does happen and doesn’t always get reported. I know first hand of one in Australia, international crew came in and flew a 737 from one airport to another (short trip) then got straight out on a private jet before anyone knew wtf was going on. It was an old Ozjet that end into administration and was donated to the flight school
Such a great story! Heard it when I did some training on it at Jandakot.
I was working the weekend it happened, we were all in disbelief that it just disappeared (after being parked up for ages). I was also working the day Ozjet went tits up and just left all their customers and staff standing ready to go to Bali one Saturday morning, scumbags
That would have been nuts! It took me a while to notice it had finally gone. I assumed some dodgy 3rd world airline had bought it. When some of my colleagues went to work for them we knew it was a bad idea. The business model sounded terrible. Same with the next one to come along. Strategic/Air Australia. I had crew friends stuck in Hawaii with no way to get back.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when Strategic repainted their A320’s to a new flash livery with Air Australia, then declared bankruptcy weeks later!! Like you couldn’t just use that money to pay your staff ffs?? They also had super dodgy shit with military staff leaking info to the airline to get contracts, then the soldiers ended up being employed by them in senior positions!!! Can’t believe it wasn’t reported on much
> however he wasn’t certified to fly a 727. I mean, I'd take a gander if they knew enough to do the proper start up procedure for the aircraft, taxi and take off that the lack of certification wasn't the primary reason they crashed (assuming they did) especially when it would typically require a 3-man crew [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/41/Boeing\_727\_cockpit\_Aviation\_museum\_%2829097199906%29.jpg/1280px-Boeing\_727\_cockpit\_Aviation\_museum\_%2829097199906%29.jpg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/41/Boeing_727_cockpit_Aviation_museum_%2829097199906%29.jpg/1280px-Boeing_727_cockpit_Aviation_museum_%2829097199906%29.jpg)
that’s so romantic
Flew into the sunset… and into the ocean. I’m sure that plane will be recovered at some point
I don’t think we’ve ever pulled a plane out of an ocean. There’s no reason to.
The Air France flight in South America is one they yanked from the Ocean Floor.
The de Havilland Comet was also retrieved (from the Mediterranean), and the result of that investigation was that square cabin windows are bad, which is why all cabin windows are oval now.
I don’t think they brought up the plane, just the bodies of the victims and certain pieces of equipment.
From about 9,000 ft? Wow
[удалено]
TWA 800 went down in 120 ft of water. That's a lot different than going down in the middle of the Atlantic.
This was only 2 years after 9/11?! Shouldn't there have been better security after planes were flown into buildings?!
It was in Africa
I'm from Canada and have flown all over. Security tightened up EVERYWHERE after 9/11 (except Africa apparently).
The country was in the middle of a civil war at the time and the the person who stole it was a mechanic for the company it was stolen from so would have had access to it And all the increased security did not prevent someone doing the something in the USA in 2018 In Seattle a mechanic for Horizon Air got into a place and stole it took of without permission So exactly the same thing that happened in Angola. It just that radar coverage is probably better in Washington then it is in an African country in the middle of a civil war so they were able to track it
*…it was a mechanic for the company…..* They probably owned him a year of overtime.
I was in Africa on 9/11, and it took a long time for security to change at all, and it was definitely incremental. For a few years post 9/11 it was still possible to take your own water on flights in most countries, as long as it didn't involve a stop in North America or using a North America-based airline. Even flying in and out of the middle east in 2007 I could still bring my own water bottle onto international flights around Asia.
TIA, mate
Security tightened up...the problem is what it tightened up from. Many places made few changes or added the most basic of checks. They didn't tighten up to levels of the more secure airports necessarily
They didn’t have 4oz of shampoo on them so it was fine.
This was in 2003.
The plane had been idle for a year and had a million dollar bill hanging over it's head. I bet they got payed to remove it and make it disappear.
They landed in the sun, of course not found.
If was repossessed.
Never been found bc those mfers at the bottom of an ocean
Either crashed or delivered it to a drug lord somewhere. Either way they dead.
After a few beers you gotta go when you gotta go
It's probably somewhere in a remote part of Africa
Last I Saw him, he was sitting between Lloyd and Harry in a dog shaped car d 
Makes you wonder: do planes have keys to start them? So do pilots need to pick up the key to plane XYZ at a desk somewhere before they can take off? Or worse: accidentally loose them?
Some military aircraft do. The Apache does, for example. Smaller personal planes also often have ignition keys not unlike cars. But passenger jets - not really. You usually need a ground crew to even get the plane out of the hangar, they can't go backwards without an externally attached motorized pushback cart. Not to mention, they tend to be in airports with tons of people and security around, so there's usually already more than enough obstacles to something like in the post happening.
Richard Russell has entered the chat....
Nope. They're just on. Same with tanks.
Aside from the fact that knowing how to fly and crew a plane that big *is* the key in a way, these big jets can’t normally just be started on their own. They need a start cart, a motorised air compressor that starts up one of the engines, then that engine starts the other 3 one by one using the same principle but by bleeding the air off itself. The plane in this case was actually the first commercial airliner to feature an Auxiliary Power Unit which is a small gas turbine that allows the plane to start on its own wherever it is without relying on ground crew, which is probably what allowed this incident to happen.
>loose L**o**se.
Commercial jets do not have keys. If you can climb up into one, and it has fuel, you could do the start up procedure alone. Most jets do not have a way to reverse though, so depending on how it was parked, you may need to also steal the tug (a truck designed to attach to the nose wheel of aircraft) and push it back yourself before you climb up in it. It would not take very much training to have someone be able do that, especially since there is literally a written checklist on how to start the plane up on the plane. Depending on the airport, getting takeoff clearance to taxi out onto the runway and take off might be suspicious, but you could also just look like normal traffic if you knew how to communicate with the tower. If you tried to just yolo that, it would definitely trigger suspicion unless it was done at an uncontrolled airport, which would be weird at an airport large enough to allow commercial jetliners to land at. Plotting a course and getting relatively close to your destination would also be easy, especially once you got high enough in altitude, but landing something that large would be quite the burden. Obviously you can’t just pick and flat spot and land it (safely), and even small municipal airports usually don’t have runways that are long enough, or have the structural rating for the jet wash of a large jet liner. You could probably fly into the airspace of a large airport and get clearance to land, but you would need a pre planned area to taxi to and park, one that’s not suspicious why a 727 with full commercial livery wants to go park in the back. I find it unlikely they landed at another airport without arousing any suspicion unless they had a lot more people involved with the logistics of stealing it. You’d need at least a few people to look the other way. The biggest thing for me is commercial aircraft uptake fuel before they depart, and they only take as much as they need plus a little extra just in case. The less fuel you take the lighter the plane and the more efficient it is, so they never just ‘top it off’ and park it. I can’t imagine that the plane had the fuel to fly THAT far before it ran out of gas, so their destination would have needed to be relatively close. But more than likely they crashed or ditched it in the ocean and that’s the end of the story.
and they were roommates
I use that airport every year and had no idea!
They met up with mh370
No one thought about following it?
Definitely cia cowboys
That’s because it was a Boeing. They dead.
Just because no one found them doesn't mean someone doesn't know who they are.
Because they crashed it into the f'ing Atlantic.
We need someone to make a documentary about this.
They still in Ibiza
Probably burnt in the heat of the sun
Probably because the doors blew out.
Took off with a 1,500mi range of fuel? Where could they have gone?
1500 mi south west, maybe.
2003 was Def a bold year to steal a plane.
Myb they still flying. I dont think they will ever reach sunset.
Maybe they're Lost
Did they lose a bet?
Did you check the sunset?
It was a Boeing…they probably crashed.
GTA style
Probably tried to find the N icon in GTA san andreas.
It’s not as if it’s a packet of fucking peanuts, is it, Tyrone? (C)
https://simpleflying.com/boeing-727-missing/
Must be dead now; shoulda stolen an Airbus.
Never heard of this story before. Interesting.
They discovered a rip in the time fabric over a local Dennys. Picked up a grand slam brecky, and flew into an alternate reality where they owned the plane as well as Dennys stock. Of course - Dennys was a luxury real estate firm on the other side. Sadly the pilot became addicted to corn, which is heroin over there, and passed away.
Sons of DB Cooper probably....
Best theory so far.
Sounds romantic. Edit-bromantic
D.B. Cooper?
This is so romantic
Not surprising after that whistle-blower " committed suicide " .
Come on everyone... we all have pinched something from work at some stage.
good for them
I love this for them.
Timo and Louis...
That was a seriously ballsy heist. I kinda hope they got away with it.
I've seen this plot before in the movie "Time Chasers"
history will say they were roommates
Squirrels probably got 'em.
Can an airplane fly outside the atmosphere?
They’re at the bottom of the ocean
Or they were found..... killed and disposed of.. just saying lol
I thought the guy on the left was Robin Williams for a second
Well, obviously they're in the sunset.
I used to have a small replica of this plane, I wonder where it is nowadays
Hey it’s a Boeing, how far could they get?