Crashed jet in W. Africa could be missing plane

suntimes.com ^ | January 3, 2004 | NAFI DIOUF AND ELLEN KNICKMEYER

[KQQL]

DAKAR, Senegal -- American authorities are investigating whether a Boeing 727 shattered in a deadly crash Dec. 25 off West Africa was the same jet that vanished in Angola in 2003, setting off a worldwide search, a U.S. State Department spokesman said Friday.

Also, a Canadian humanitarian pilot said he saw a 727 with the missing Angola jet's tail number at an airport in Guinea in June, a month after the jet's disappearance.

The plane's old tail number was not fully covered, and the plane was reregistered in Guinea and flown by Lebanese-owned Union des Transports Africains, pilot Bob Strothers said.

''We saw it on the ramp,'' Strothers said by telephone from the Guinean capital, Conakry. ''A new registration had been painted on the aluminum part, and underneath ... you could see the old registration number, which matches the plane that went missing.''

The plane that crashed off Benin killed at least 130 of the 161 people aboard.

Strothers said he believed UTA had at least two Boeing 727s at the time of the crash, making it impossible for him to judge whether the vanished Angola plane and the crashed Benin jet were the same.

Strothers first disclosed his information before the crash, in which the plane, carrying mostly Lebanese, clipped a building at the end of the runway in Cotonou and plunged into the Atlantic Ocean.

The information heightened the mystery surrounding the missing jet, which took off from an airport in Luanda, Angola, on May 25 and disappeared.

The United States has led an international hunt for the Angolan 727, fearing that terrorists might have taken the plane. American officials also have cited a possible business dispute as a reason for the disappearance of the Angolan jet.

Lebanese media on Friday suggested the two planes were the same.

But aviation officials in Lebanon and others told the AP that the plane that crashed off Benin appeared much older than the one that went missing from Angola.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Lou Fintor said, ''We're aware of the reports. We're checking into them.''

[KQQL]

Questions Surface About Benin Jet Crash

U.S. Investigates if Airliner That Crashed in West Africa Was Same Jet Missing Since May
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20040102_1293.html

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[Ophiucus]

Let me get this straight - there's actually a market for stolen 727's? That must be a heck of a chop shop....

[WFTR]

It's better if the jet were simply stolen in a dispute over ownership by some African countries than to have it in the hands of terrorists planning to use it as a weapon.

[Bon mots]

Easy enough to switch places with a real jet... just shoot down the real one over the ocean somewhere and set the fake jet to imitate it. Pilots can turn on the transponder after the real jet has been shot down.

Imagine just attaching two air-to-air missiles under the wings of a tanker. Shoot down an international flight someplace where it won't be missed... then set the transponder of the shooter-plane to mimic the plane it just shot down. Now you can look like an innocent flight and enter the airspace of the destination country unmolested.

I hope the good guys know of this possibility...