Posted on 08/15/2003 6:55:38 AM PDT by dead
A Boeing 727 has disappeared from Angola. Was it insurance fraud? Has a cartel of diamond smugglers got it? Or could it be in the hands of al-Qaeda? William Langley reports.
The old Boeing had done its duty well. It had served 26 loyal years in the colours of American Airlines, but its best days were long gone, and as the sun rose over West Africa on May 25 this year it sat forlornly on the greasy concrete apron of Luanda International Airport in Angola, apparently leased to Air Angola.
It hadn't flown for 14 months, and its sorry state seemed to tell a familiar story about African airports - unpaid bills, dodgy paperwork, token maintenance. Nevertheless, no one paid it much attention. But the 727 was about to become the centrepiece of one of the strangest mysteries in aviation history, one that would alarm Western governments and baffle investigators around the world.
There are only a few places where a 46.5 metre-long, 90,718 kilogram commercial airliner can take off without warning and simply disappear. Africa is one of them, and whoever was at the controls of the Boeing 727 - registration number N844AA - on the afternoon of May 25 must have known the possibilities of what pilots call the "gauntlet" - the vast, virtually uncontrolled airspace south of the Sahara Desert and north of the Limpopo River. For, at around teatime, the plane suddenly fired up its engines, rumbled down the runway, soared into the velvety dusk and vanished.
From the moment the plane's disappearance was disclosed, the CIA and the secretive National Security Agency in the United States have been urgently trying to find out. British, French and Russian intelligence services have been co-opted into the search. Spy satellites have swept all potential landing places within the plane's range. Western diplomats throughout Africa have been ordered to keep their ears to the ground, and thousands of hours of air-traffic communications have been analysed in the search for clues.
Unconfirmed reports have come in of the plane making a clandestine landing in Nigeria, crashing off the Seychelles, and being seen, with a hasty new paint job, flying between Guinea and the Lebanon.
"Basically," says Phil Reeker, a spokesman for the US State Department, "we don't know where it is. But we really need to find out. This is a serious matter."
Underlining these fears was an updated advisory notice, issued by the US Homeland Security Department the month the plane went missing, saying that the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation had a "continuing fixation" with using large commercial aircraft for attacks. And that following the plane's purchase from American Airlines in late 2001, it was converted into a flying fuel-tanker. "It doesn't take a genius," says Yates, "to figure out that if you filled it up and stuck a couple of suicide pilots on board, you'd have a huge bomb."
Many threads remain to be unravelled in the mystery of the lost Boeing. Some may, indeed, lead back to al-Qaeda, and others, perhaps, to the culture of what passes for Angola's Civil Aviation Authority. But one thread seems clearly to lead to the brash figure of Ben Padilla, a 51-year-old "cowboy" cargo pilot who went missing, from his home in Miami, Florida, about the same time as the plane.
Padilla is a minor legend in the murky realms of Third World aviation, someone known as the man to turn to for difficult missions. A pilot, engineer, navigator and mechanic, he is, says a former colleague, "a guy who'll do anything. He sorts out the money problems, cuts through the paperwork, and brings your plane home."
His sister, Benita, says he is a "John Wayne type - intimidating. Like he's bulletproof". He is not, though, according to the US Federal Aviation Authority, certified to fly 727s. Nor is he given to vanishing acts.
Padilla arrived in Angola two months before the Boeing's disappearance. He knew who to look for. Helder Preza, director of the Angolan CAA, recalls Padilla telling him that he had come to take possession of the Boeing on behalf of its owners. "We told him that was no problem," says Preza, "as long as the fees owing on it were met." Padilla apparently promised to organise the money - $US50,000 ($76,000) - and, in the meantime, was allowed to do maintenance work on the plane.
Ascertaining the true ownership of aircraft - especially those in Africa - can be difficult. The FAA's database shows that after being "retired" by American Airlines in late 2001, the Boeing was bought by a Miami-based company called Aerospace Sales and Leasing for slightly less than $US1 million. But ASL appears to have no listed telephone number or corporate address and US press reports say the man who owns it, Maury Joseph, was barred from running a publicly traded company after being convicted in 1997 of defrauding investors.
Joseph will not speak about the Luanda episode, or anything else, but his son Lance, a Miami lawyer, says 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.
But, says Lance, soon after entering the agreement Air Angola failed to keep up the payments. The plane ran up further bills sitting on the ground in Luanda, and ASL was trying to negotiate its repossession when it vanished. Lance says he "doesn't recall" the name of Ben Padilla and has no idea where the Boeing is now.
On the day it flew away the 727 took on 953,000 litres of jet fuel - enough to give it a range of about 2400 kilometres. Airport officials say two men - one of them thought to be Padilla - boarded the aircraft before the refuelling, and that at about 5pm the plane's three engines were started. In fading light, the aircraft suddenly taxied down the runway, spun around and took off. The men in the cockpit made no radio contact, and the plane's transponder, which allows it to be more easily tracked by radar, was switched off.
Luanda Airport - one of the world's more dilapidated - has enough trouble dealing with its daily handful of authorised flights. No system was in place to prevent an unauthorised one.
"The plane would have been lost within minutes," says Richard Cornwell, a senior researcher at the South African Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria. "Basically, once you go north of South Africa there is no air-traffic control until you reach the Mediterranean coast. Radar over most of Africa is non-existent. This aircraft could have gone anywhere."
Early media reports say the plane finally broke radio silence far out over the Indian Ocean, to request landing permission in the Seychelles - more than 3200 kilometres from Luanda. Seychelles officials deny they ever heard from N844AA, and certainly the plane did not arrive.
To have even reached the vicinity of the holiday islands it would have needed to be refuelled somewhere on the African mainland - and no country admits having received it. Almost six weeks after the 727's disappearance an intriguing report surfaced of it having been spotted on the ground in Conakry, the capital of Guinea. Bob Strother, a Canadian pilot, says it appeared to have been given a hasty respray and a new Guinean registration number. "There's absolutely no doubt it's the same aircraft," Strother told a newspaper. "The old registration is clearly visible."
The Boeing was said to be in the hands of "a member of West Africa's Lebanese business community" who was using it to run goods between Conakry and Beirut. There is no doubt that the Lebanese diaspora in West Africa - which controls the diamond trade and much else - includes a number of canny and redoubtable operators. But would one go to the lengths of stealing a commercial jet at a time of extreme anti-terrorist security?
Before the question could be answered the plane vanished again. It has not returned to Guinea, and the US State Department says it is treating Strother's report "with caution". Reeker says, "Our position is that this aircraft remains unaccounted for."
So where is the plane? And where is Padilla? The missing pilot's brother Joe, speaking from his home in Pensacola, Florida, fears the worst. "The family has heard nothing," says Joe Padilla.
"Not since before he went to Angola. My understanding is that it was a legitimate mission. His job was to repossess the plane, make it airworthy and bring it out of there. My feeling is something bad happened while he was getting ready to leave. Someone forced him to do something against his will.
"Ben's an adventurer, and a great airman. He's worked in all the crazy places - Paraguay, Mozambique, the Philippines; the places other guys don't want to work. But he's not a criminal and he's certainly not a terrorist.
"The fact he hasn't been in touch tells me he is probably dead. I don't know how. Maybe the people who forced him to take off killed him later. Maybe if the plane wasn't fully ready to fly, it crashed somewhere. It's all a big mystery."
And so it may remain. The State Department says there is "no reason" to believe the Boeing has been taken by terrorists. But the apparent ease with which a purpose-built flying bomb can vanish is a sobering reminder of the kind of opportunity available to an outfit like al-Qaeda.
"African aviation is another world,' says Chris Yates. "Anything can happen there. And now it has."
Links? If so, then the current cover story of the Lebanese 'Business' interests doesn't wash. They could not haul any other kind of cargo, than fuel, and why would they do that to Lebanon by plane?
And what legitimate business operators, no matter how shady, want to be put squarely in the target-sight of the CIA, NSA and FBI? And risk a nice long stretch in Guantanamo?
I doubt you could physically put that much fuel on a 727. 1.7 Mlbs of fuel is twice the weight of a fully fueled 747.
For a price.
The plane was to be used as a fuel transportation tanker to isolated places. There are multiple tanks in side that were intended
to haul multiple fuels - gas, diesel, kerosene, etc.
How it ends up being used, may be a cause for concern.
I have always use them as an example of US policy gone nuts. Gulf Oil owned a refinery, guarded by marxist troops (Cuban for years) to keep CIA backed terrorist from blowing it up.
Smacking it into a southern European city would much easier. Athens, Rome, Madrid, for example.
Assuming there are good roads to where they are going. This is Africa after all...
You don't truck much of anything anywhere.
If you can’t truck anything, there’s no point to mining anything.
The mining story is complete hogwash.
No, I didn't bookmark any of them, sorry. Even this story mentions that fact though. I remember the older stories talking about the plane had huge tanks where the cargo/passengers would ordinarily have gone and like I said, this story mentions it as well. I have no stake in it one way or the other- I don't really care.
I wouldn't count on it.
I entered Mozambique from Zimbabwe once. My intentions were to visit the city of Beira and then travel down the coast to the capital and then on back to South Africa. I was in an old VW Passat. Beira is the second largerst city. The map shows a big paved road all the way down the coast but in actual practice, Beira was effectively cut off. The city when I saw it was like something from the twilight zone. Decaying, wary, quiet. Big Russian ships washed up on the beach, everything metal rusting. The locals peering out at you from the broken windows of the huge Portugese colonial type houses.
Getting into Beira was an adventure, getting down the coast even more so. Some craters in the road were house sized and in many areas there were still mines along the road. The petrol stations were so spread out (and couldn't be counted on to have petrol in the first place) you were literally rolling the dice on whether you could make it or not. We were fairly lucky, we made it and only lost the exhaust system while skirting a massive crater in the road. Many fall prey to bribery rackets along the way- basically if they see you coming, they push a young child in front of the car and when you hit it- it's off to jail with you until you pony up a lot of cash.
I don't know the situation in Angola. All I was saying is- Africa is... Well, it's Africa. It's total chaos. Nothing can be counted upon. There might be a four lane highway running right up to the mountains in Angola or it might be a track that forces you to ford rivers (a distinct possibility) or it might be lined with bandits waiting to hijack the fuel truck. It's something to think about- that's all.
I traveled down one of these spur roads from a major city to a minor city. The potholed paved road turned into a dirt road at the far end of the smaller town, where a police station was. The dirt road, after 100 miles, would go to Somalia.
It was the only time I really felt like I was on the edge of civilization.
Diamonds are rather easy to move.
After you get them out of the ground, which generally involves moving and sifting enormous amounts of earth with very heavy equipment you truck in.
You would also need some heavy equipment to build a runway that could land a 727 in the mountains.
The story sounds implausible to me. And this plane was never used as they claim it was intended.
Listen I have no idea why the plane was there and am no expert on Angola having only been there a few times, you may know more than I do about the place. HOWEVER moving heavy equipment to an area once is different than moving fuel all the time. You get it in once with a heavy armed guard.
I will also tell you there are few mountains in the country though much of it is high plateau. Further there are a dozen or so runways of 2,000+ meters. There are also hundreds of dirt fields and smaller paved ones that get fuel from somewhere.
Wait until we find out what the ending is. Now go get the rest of us some popcorn.
-archy-/-
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