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Posted on 07/11/2003 7:56:10 AM PDT by Brian S
`A perfect flying bomb' disappears
Aged Boeing 727 last seen in June
Authorities cast nervous eye on the sky
NICOLAAS VAN RIJN The theft, in a post-Sept. 11 world, has sparked a continent-wide hunt for the missing jetliner. And now, with U.S. President George W. Bush making a swing through Africa, authorities are keeping a nervous eye on the skies. Bush flies back to Washington this weekend after stops today in Uganda and Nigeria. "We don't have any reliable assessments about what this portends, what it could be, who may be behind it," said White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer. "But it is an issue that is being worked on." While the theft may be as simple as an ownership dispute, officials are especially concerned because the 727, which can carry up to 190 passengers, has been retrofitted as a fuel tanker, ostensibly to ferry aviation fuel into remote African air strips. "That makes it the perfect flying bomb," said an employee of an aircraft charter company in Miami, which is abuzz with talk of the missing plane. "Of course it may be nothing more complicated than a repo job. But it's the other things you can do with it that has people worried, especially after 9/11," the employee said, referring to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States in which planes were used as flying bombs. The 28-year-old Boeing disappeared from its parking place at the airport in Luanda, Angola, on May 25, setting off a continent-wide search involving sophisticated satellite surveillance by the U.S. National Security Agency, aviation authorities across Africa, and intelligence agents operating on the ground for several Western nations, including the U.S. and Britain. Bob Strother, a Canadian pilot who flies humanitarian aid into Africa for Air Serv International, made the last known sighting June 28, when he spotted the three-engine jetliner parked at Conakry airport in the West African nation of Guinea. "The aircraft was here in Conakry June 28," Strother said in an e-mail Wednesday to his company headquarters in the United States. "We walked close to it on our way to file our flight plan and check the weather. We noticed the old registration had been removed and a Guinea registration painted over, 3X-GOM. "We could see clearly 44AA, the last part of the old registration, just at the end of the new," Strother said. "Also, the white strip on the side was new paint. A fellow that works in the flight plan office said it belonged to a Lebanese who was going to fly cargo from Beirut to Guinea." Strother snapped a shot of the plane but the picture, he confessed, is "not a very good one, as we did not want to be observed."
STAFF REPORTER
An aged Boeing 727 stolen in May from a sleepy African airport could have been rigged as the ultimate flying bomb before it disappeared, authorities say.
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`It is not a stretch to think this plane could end up in the hands of terrorists' |
Many don't know what to make of the disappearance.
"It may be as simple as a contract dispute, but because it was tricked out as a fuel tanker, anything is possible," one aviation source said. "The problem is, the plane has disappeared. No one knows where it is. And just how easy do you think it is to hide a 200,000 pound, 153-foot aircraft? Especially with the whole world looking for it."
Chris Yates, a civil aviation security analyst with the authoritative Jane's Aviation and Security, said it's not difficult to imagine why U.S. authorities, working with their African colleagues, are desperate to locate the plane, which was in passenger service with American Airlines for decades before being sold.
"If you fill that up with however many gallons of jet fuel and stick a couple of suicide pilots on it, it doesn't take an Einstein to figure out you could fly into an American or British embassy or another target they want to strike against — it could be a huge bomb," Yates said. "It is not a stretch to think this plane could end up in the hands of terrorists. A number of companies involved in gun running in Africa have indirect ties to various terrorist groups."
Western intelligence officials say Al Qaeda operatives are known to be casing possible targets in Kenya and other East African nations.
Officials are also looking at a perfectly innocent explanation, that, in the rough-and-tumble world of airplane charters, the jetliner was repossessed after the lessee ran behind on payments. Because the jet had been parked in Luanda for some 14 months, it had also run up tens of thousands of dollars — by some accounts hundreds of thousands — in parking fees.
There's also still no word of Benjamin Padilla of Miami, the mechanic who was sent from the U.S. to return the plane to flying condition. His sister, Benita Padilla-Kirkland, said last night her brother hasn't been heard from since he was last seen boarding the plane May 25.
The jetliner first landed in Angola's 4 de Fevereiro International Airport in March, 2001, and was seized when its documentation turned out to belong to another plane. The plane attracted little attention until just recently, said Helder Preza, Angola's aviation director.
"The owner of the aircraft contacted us saying he wished to fly out of Angola," he said. The aircraft was boarded by a man who described himself as "the legitimate representative of the aircraft's owner," Preza added, and moments later the jetliner, freshly fuelled with 530,000 litres of jet fuel, lifted off.
"The person who flew out the plane was no stranger to the aircraft," Preza said, describing the man as an American citizen.
Investigators since then have traced countless rumours — the plane's now hidden beyond the prying eyes of satellites in a hangar somewhere, it's crashed in deepest jungle, or even the ocean. And no one's talking.
With files from star wire services
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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It is in the breaking news sidebar! |
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It may be as simple as a contract dispute, but because it was tricked out as a fuel tanker, anything is possible," one aviation source said. "The problem is, the plane has disappeared. No one knows where it is. And just how easy do you think it is to hide a 200,000 pound, 153-foot aircraft? Especially with the whole world looking for it."
It may be as simple as a contract dispute, but because it was tricked out as a fuel tanker, anything is possible," one aviation source said. "The problem is, the plane has disappeared. No one knows where it is. And just how easy do you think it is to hide a 200,000 pound, 153-foot aircraft? Especially with the whole world looking for it."
it could be abandoned part of highway under foliage cover
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