Disappearing commercial jets are rare events. While most people are familiar with the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in 2014, sometimes the disappearance of passenger jets fly under the public radar. That’s the case with a Boeing 727 that departed from Quatro de Fevereiro Airport in Angola 18 years ago. It took off late one afternoon and was never seen again. It was, however, no ordinary disappearance. There are layers of complexity in the case. The plane was leased to TAAG Angola Airlines, but was grounded at the time because of unpaid airport fees. The men who took the plane — a private U.S. pilot named Ben Padilla and an Angolan named John Mutantu — weren’t certified to fly it, but due to poor regulatory oversight managed to snatch the aircraft. Because it was considered stolen, the FBI and CIA were called in to investigate, but even those well-resourced organizations found no trace of the plane. An older model Boeing disappearing from an African airport might not normally arouse such interest in Washington, DC, but this was two years after 9/11, and the memories of weaponized airplanes were on everyone’s minds. It was never clear whether it was stolen for insurance purposes by the owners, whether it was stolen with the intent to make it available to unsavory characters, or whether it was a deliberate concerted terrorist attempt. It wasn’t automatically assumed that the plane had crashed. There are a lot of long, unpaved runways in Africa that could accommodate a Boeing 727. A Boeing 727 is kind of hard to disappear long-term, but there have been no ongoing reports of Boeing 727s flying around Africa. Now, some 18 years down the road, most people connected with the plane – lessors, pilots, U.S. Government officials, debtors, and other stakeholders, believe the plane crashed in the ocean, but with no trace ever found, the true fate of Boeing N844AA remains a mystery.
