Family of Possible 727 Pilot: He Is Not A Terrorist

ABC News Exclusive ^ | June 19, 2003 | Invesigative Team staff report

[ewing]

The family of a man believed to have been piloting a Boeing 727 that mysteriously took off and disappeared from an Angolan runway last month told told of their angiush as international authorities fear the jetliner could be used for a terrorist act.

In a baffling vanishing act, workers at the Luanda Airport in Angola watched dumbfounded on May 25 as the Boeing 727 taxied down the runway and took off- without permission.

The plane -which ABC News has learned was refitted to haul diesel fuel tanks, making it a potential flying bomb-has not been seen since.

The man the United States Government suspects of piloting the 727 Benjamin Padilla-a US citizen from Florida.

Padilla too, has vanished, and his family is worried.

'I am concerned that he might have been hijacked,' Padilla brother said in an exclusive interview with ABC News.

[ewing]

Anyone see this on Good Morning America?

[mbynack]

He Is Not A Terrorist

Isn't that what the relatives of the 911 hijackers kept saying?

[Ayn Rand wannabe]

How can you just lose a 727? That seems a bit odd.

[ewing]

All 19 of them, mostly from Saudi Arabia.

[Dirk McQuickly]

What is it with terrorists and the last name "Padilla"?

(see wife of Terry Nichols, dirty bomber...)

[ewing]

Better yet how has this guy been missing for almost a month?

[Hodar]

I wonder if he is any relation to Jose Padilla, another convicted US terrorist?? Is this guy a recent convert to Islam, like Jose was?

[ewing]

[TomGuy]

Wonder if Benjamin is related to Jose Padilla (of "dirty bomber" fame)?

[Trust but Verify]

He hasn't necessarily been missing for a month, it is a month since he talked to his family. By their own admission, he is something of a nomad.

There are so many possibilities here, including the plane crashing, guns, drugs, terrorism.

I hope for the family's sake mr Padilla phones home soon.

[Ayn Rand wannabe]

very true...why are we only hearing about this now? Losing a guy and plane that big and we hear about it a month later?

[Trust but Verify]

Padilla is a pretty common hispanic name.

[ewing]

Was he that Chicago idiot pulled off the plane?

[ewing]

The CIA has been chasin this for weeks..

[Trust but Verify]

This has been discussed well before now. This is not news in itself. the fact it still hasn't turned up is what is making it curiouser and curiouser.

[Grut]

The thought of climbing into an airplane that's been sitting out in the weather for a year or more makes this one-time aviator cringe. Airplanes that aren't flown break. This bird is probably at the bottom of a crater somewhere in the rain forest.

[ewing]

Could he have been the middleman for a terrorism concern?

[Bikers4Bush]

"refitted to haul diesel fuel tanks"

Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. This plane will turn up and it'll be loaded with something very nasty when it does.

[ewing]

And the hydraulics may have been very dicey on that bird..

[Xenalyte]

Mohammed Atta's dad insisted that he'd talked to his son on September 13, so of COURSE he wasn't a terrorist.