Into thin air (Where on earth is Angola's missing 727? Is it now a bomb?)

The Telegraph, London via SMH ^ | August 15, 2003 | William Langley

[Prof Engineer]

ping

[Blood of Tyrants]

On the day it flew away the 727 took on 953,000 litres of jet fuel

This MUST be a typo. That is 251,000 gallons or about 1.7 MILLION lbs of fuel. 9,530 liters is a more realistic number for a 727.

[sarasota]

I want to see a movie made of this--would be a great piece of publicity and perhaps could lead to the "capture" of the plane/pilot. (Though any damage could be done in the time it takes to make a film.)

[dead]

It could really be a great movie, if we figured out what the hell happened. That pilot seems like a fascinating character. If he ain't dead, he's got some stories to tell.

[Tijeras_Slim]

It landed on the three ships sailing around inthe Indian Ocean.

[dead]

Bin Laden and Saddam are building quite the little empire out there.

[the gillman@blacklagoon.com]

Could it make the flight across the atlantic to some airstrip in South America for refueling, then back over the ocean and up to DC to be used as a bomb?

[msdrby]

It isn't a typo if this article was not originated in the US. Europeans designate their numbers diferently, using commas where Americans use decimals. 953.000 liters isn't that much.

[Fudd]

According to a site offering a 727-200 for sale, its fuel capacity is 10,629 gal.

[dead]

The article is from Nigeria. I don't know their number system.

[msdrby]

Yeah, I was just trying to find out how much fuel it takes to range 2400 km.

[Paul Ross]

the 727 was leased to Air Angola - the country's ramshackle flag-carrier - which appears to be ultimately owned by the Angolan Army. The plane was converted to carry bulk fuel in sealed tanks to mining outposts in the country's remote interior.

Does this application for a skin-flint country sound a tad on the ludicrous side? When they can just truck fuel in overland for half the price or less, which do you think the supposed lessors would be most likely to choose...? This application, for these particular lessors, should have sounded sufficiently implausible that red alarms should have been blaring. Mr. Maury Joseph appears to have been so overly desperate to make a deal that he ignored the obvious warning signs...

But, says Lance, soon after entering the agreement Air Angola failed to keep up the payments.

Classic Al Quaeda technique of terrorism on the cheap. Get your 'enemy' to pay for the means to attack it. Air Angola's point people all need to be arrested...including whichever General in the Angolan Army was running this operation. The Lebanese characters they are associating with are, at a guess, Islamic, and radical. What a strange coincidence.

My guess is that Joseph did send in Padilla, his mealy-mouthed denials notwithstanding (probably doesn't want to pay the prospective widow anything). And got him killed, because he was too cheap to send in back-up for security.

And check the mumbo-jumbo denial from the State Dept.:

"the US State Department says it is treating Strother's report "with caution".

And:

The State Department says there is "no reason" to believe the Boeing has been taken by terrorists. "

And precisely why do they claim there is 'no reason'? Just because they say so? This is either to abet our catching the thieving plane-nappers off guard , that we are not really making this a top-priority (c'mon though, how plausible is THAT!) ...or more likely, that the Administration Nanny-Staters don't want the U.S. Sheeple to panic.

[Hatteras]

You know that daughter of the deposed royal family that needs your bank account number so they can transfer millions of dollars out of the country? Well, maybe this Padilla guy figured out an easier way to transfer the cash and decided to take her up on the offer.

[CJ Wolf]

bump for later reading

[beelzepug]

I'm glad everyone else questioned those numbers. I knew that couldn't be right. You'd need one of those AN-225's to carry a million pounds of anything.

[Blood of Tyrants]

It could, but South America is much better monitored than Africa so the possibility of detection is much higher. Also, there are many military search radars up and down both coasts that would detect the anomolie of a plane flying without it's transponder on many hundreds of miles before it was a problem. (I hope.)

So, the sneak attack would probably come in the form of a flight that looked legitimate and it would divert only at the last possible second.

All that being said, I think that this is just a case of old fashioned larceny.

[Prodigal Son]

I believe this 727 had been specially modified with huge tanks in the cargo/inside area of the plane. Most of the inside was fuel tank it seemed like. At least from what I remember reading about it a couple of months ago.

[Blood of Tyrants]

250 gallons wouldn't get them 2400 kilometers (nearly 1500 miles). 250 gallons will barely get an SUV 1500 miles.

[Prodigal Son]

When they can just truck fuel in overland for half the price or less, which do you think the supposed lessors would be most likely to choose...?

Assuming there are good roads to where they are going. This is Africa after all...