- [Presenter] What is up Ewu Crew?
Today we'll be covering the
still unsolved disappearance
of a massive Boeing 727 plane
and it's pilot Ben Padilla.
Our story begins in May,
2003 at Luanda Angola,
a port city on the West
Coast of South Africa.
Sitting idle in the Quatro de Fevereiro
International Airport in Luanda
was a Boeing 727 plane
manufactured in 1975.
It was unpainted aside from a
stripe of blue, red and white.
It had been operated by American Airlines
for nearly 25 years before
its most recent owner,
a Miami-based company by the name
of Aerospace Sales and
Leasing purchased it.
After Aerospace Sales and Leasing obtained
the 28 year old aircraft, they leased it
to TAAG Angola Airlines
which would soon be the
last resting place known
for this massive aircraft.
There in the Quatro de
Fevereiro International Airport,
the 727 had been grounded and idle
for nearly 14 months.
During that time, it had
accumulated more than $4 million
in unpaid airport fees.
Over time, all the passenger seats inside
of the aircraft were
ordered to be removed.
What had once been a commercial aircraft
was transformed into something outfitted
to carry diesel fuel
at its owner's request.
In fact, Aerospace Sales
and Leasing intended
to repossess the aircraft from Air Angola
and fly it to South Africa to repurpose it
rather than let more dust
pile on top of it in Angola
at least that was the plan.
On the evening of May 25th, 2003
something rather peculiar happened.
Around 6:00 p.m. just as the sun
had begun to set over Angola,
two men were seen sneaking
in to the idol 727 aircraft
without permission.
One of the two men was
Ben Charles Padilla,
an American pilot and flight engineer.
The other man was a mechanic,
hired from the Republic of
the Congo, John M Muntatu.
It was unclear to
witnesses of the incident
whether or not there had been anyone else
aboard the aircraft that evening.
However, what was
inherently clear was that
neither of the men on the
aircraft were certified
to operate a plane of that caliber.
Although Ben Padilla
was a certified pilot,
he was only qualified to fly
a small private aircraft,
nothing near size of the 727.
In fact, that particular Boeing model
usually requires at least
a three person air crew
on board before taking off,
not two under qualified men.
Nevertheless with Padilla
assumed to be its pilot,
the Boeing 727 roared to life
and began going down one
of the airports runways
without communicating to
any of the control towers.
Various tower officers tried tirelessly
to make contact with the aircraft
as it zigzagged across the runway
but they received no response
from anyone on board.
All of the planes lights were
off and the whole aircraft
was ghostly as it took off Southwest.
The 727 bellowed out
over the Atlantic ocean
and disappeared neither the
plane nor the crew piloting it
were ever seen again.
The freakish and erratic
nature of the departure,
triggered a frantic
search and investigation.
The United States' two primary
security organizations,
the FBI and the CIA dove
into attempting to locate
the plane right away.
Officials believed
wholeheartedly that the aircraft
could have served as a flying bomb
if it fell into the wrong hands.
Right before the incident,
the 727 had been filled
with 14,800 gallons of fuel
which would have enabled it
to have a potential range
of up to 1,500 miles without stopping.
The only communication
from the stolen aircraft
was when someone aboard the 727 asked
for landing permission in the Seychelles,
the small Island nation located
in the Indian Ocean
East of Africa accepted
the landing request.
The Boeing 727 however, never
attempted to land there.
The 28 year old, 200 series
727 with a tail number
of N844AA was never
discovered on land or sea.
The Boeing 727 serves as
the single largest aircraft
in history to have ever
disappeared without a trace,
which begs the question,
how does a 727 disappear into thin air?
Well, there are a variety
of ideas surrounding its disappearance.
Since the FBI and CIA
had initially believed
that the aircraft was stolen
to serve some kind of terrorist attack,
they immediately dove deep
into the investigation
of its disappearance when there
were no sightings reported
of the aircraft or of
any recent plane crashes
in the surrounding area,
it became evident that it
was not being for terrorism
but rather something else.
However, that something else
posed a puzzling question
to those trying to unravel
be aircraft's disappearance.
Investigators started by
digging up as much information
as possible regarding
the men that were assumed
to have been piloting
the plane by themselves.
Ben Charles Padilla, the man thought
to have been actually flying the plane
was 50 years old at the
time of the incident.
His family remarked that
Padilla had an intense love
for airplanes since he was a child,
his affinity for aviation and his desire
to push the limits of the sky led Padilla
to take flying lessons in his mid 20's.
It was then that he got
his first certification
to fly small private aircraft's
and later on became certified in airframe
and power plant mechanics.
Padilla's sister claimed
that he had been mechanically
gifted his whole life,
it was his passion.
Prior to the incident, Padilla
lived in Southern Florida
with two kids and his fiance of 15 years.
Although the two never
officially got married,
Padilla had ensured that
his fiance would have power
of attorney in case
anything happened to him.
This also meant that
most of his possessions
would go to her.
When investigators attempted
to run a background search
on the second person
confirmed to have been
on the Boeing 727, they found nothing.
All they knew was that the
man's name was John M Muntatu
and that he was from the
Republic of the Congo.
Both Ben Padilla and John
Muntatu had been working
with Angolan mechanics to get
the aircraft flight ready.
At the time of the incident,
Padilla was a freelancer
who had worked with Aerospace Sales
and Leasing's owner Maury Joseph
on two occasions prior
to the Angola assignment.
When Joseph had needed the
Boeing 727 registered N844AA
to be repossessed, he sent Ben Padilla
to oversee all necessary repairs.
He was Joseph's acting agent so to speak.
Padilla worked at the repair station
and mostly supervised the men working
on getting the massive aircraft ready
to return to the skies.
He also was in charge of
hiring a pilot and copilot
to fly the 727 over to
Johannesburg where a new buyer
was awaiting its arrival.
Just two days before the
aircraft was scheduled
to leave Luanda, Padilla
continued to do his job
in every way necessary.
He made rather normal
plans with Air Gemini,
the Luanda based airline that
operated the repair station
to have the aircraft moved
out to one of the runways.
Moving the aircraft from the
hangar to the main runway
was necessary since the crew
needed to run all three engines
at the same time at full
power for a systems check
to ensure that it was
ready to be airborne.
The morning of May 26th, just hours
after Padilla had mysteriously
boarded the aircraft
and disappeared into the sky,
Maury Joseph received a call informing him
that some unknown crew had taken
the plane without permission.
Joseph immediately
notified American officials
and stated that they needed to
alert all aviation officials
that a plane had been stolen.
From there, it was necessary
to call every airport
that had runways large enough
to handle a 727 landing.
No one knew where the aircraft was headed
or why Padilla had so suddenly decided
to abandon the life he
had made for himself
to go on a joy ride of such proportions.
Padilla's brother, who
was interviewed dozens
of times after his brother's disappearance
has repeatedly stated
that he does not believe
that his brother flew away
in that Boeing 727 willingly.
He believes wholeheartedly that the plane
was likely hijacked by
some kind of terrorists
who needed the pilot even
if they were not qualified
to properly fly an
aircraft of that stature.
If this is the case,
Padilla's brother believes
that Padilla was either killed
or held hostage by whomever
his kidnappers were.
However, Padilla and his
brother had often talked
over the possibility of
an aircraft hijacking
as it was not unheard
of in his line of work.
On one occasion, Padilla had stated
that he would rather
purposefully crash an aircraft
than fly it properly if it were hijacked.
If the 727 was crashed, bits and pieces
from the wreckage have never
been discovered or identified.
In the summer of 2003, just months
after the Boeing 727 disappeared,
a plane resembling the description
had been cited somewhere
in Papa New Guinea
almost immediately after
the siding was reported
to the FBI and CIA investigators,
a rumor began to spread
wildly that the plane
was the same one that had
been stolen from Angola.
However, when officials
looked into the claim
and the rumors, none of
them turned out to be true.
Padilla and the Boeing 727
were still untraceable.
Eventually, the disappearance of the 727,
Padilla and Muntatu lost
its sense of urgency.
It was evident to the officials
investigating the case
that Padilla no longer
posed an immediate threat
to the United States
nor any other country.
This deescalation of the situation
led more and more officials
to believe that the plane
was stolen as part of a financial scam
on behalf of the owner
himself, Maury Joseph.
One of the primary
investigators on the case,
stated publicly that it was never clear
whether it was stolen for
insurance purposes by the owner
or whether it was stolen with the intent
to make it available
to unsavory characters
or whether it was a deliberate
concerted terrorist attempt.
But there was speculation of all three.
It was not wholly impossible for Joseph
to have staged the entire disappearance.
In fact, there was a lot of
motive to support the idea
that Joseph was trying to
commit insurance fraud.
The aircraft was in a bad
state of repair at the time
and he had known it was
basically just a big source
of parts to sell.
If the aircraft were to have gone missing
in the sense that it
was hijacked or stolen,
Joseph would be able to file a claim on it
besides Joseph's history
with faulty insurance claims
and companies that ended
up bankrupt was not short.
Without the 727 ever having resurfaced
and no physical evidence being discovered,
there is no real way to
know what exactly happened
on that fateful night of May 25th, 2003.
Some say it crashed into the ocean shortly
after taking off as Padilla
had no experience flying
an aircraft of that caliber
others claim it was shot
down with the missile
by the Angolan Air Force in
an attempt to avoid conflict.
Another possibility is that it was stolen
on behalf of a drug cartel
after all the cleared out seats
would allow their
operation optimal storage
for illegal exports.
Whatever the case may
be, Ben Padilla piloting
the stolen Boeing 727 into the sunset
is the single largest
aircraft disappearance
to occur without any trace.
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