[Ronin]

This is just plain silly. As stated on previous threads, the idea that you could "hide" a 727 in the dessert is impossible. Airliners need runways. Long, flat, hard-surfaced and clear.

You could no more take a 727 off from dessert sand then you could from water. The Western Sahara may be the size of Europe, but the number of runways that could handle a 727 are few.

I think this writer is just trying to take advantage of the 9-11 anniversary to sell some fearmongering copy.

[meg70]

No radar in that part of Africa, I share your difficulty in believing that you could hide a plane transferring it to 2-3 locations..but maybe it was planned ahead of time..

[Diddle E. Squat]

This is just plain silly. As stated on previous threads, the idea that you could "hide" a 727 in the dessert is impossible.

I dunno about a 727, but there's that old legend about smuggling knives into prison by hiding them in a dessert...

[JustPiper]

Well, Snopes doesn't have anything on it, so I asked them to check it out -g-

[Kenny Bunk]

The Deserts of the world are not all the flowing dunes of some 1930s Hollywood Foreign Legion movie, Ronin. The Sahara has many areas that are as flat as a board and at at least as hard as Muroc Dry Lake. So has the Sinai Peninsula, Saudi Arabia, and plenty of places in Iraq, and Jordan, and Syria.

Would it be a safe landing or take-off? Hell no. But then it doesn't have to be.

[JSteff]

"As stated on previous threads, the idea that you could "hide" a 727 in the *dessert* is impossible. Airliners need runways"

Uhm, explain then how a 747 loaded with a shuttle can take off and land at Edwards. Edwards, if you are not aware, is a big, well, desert. The do it all the time. Deserts can be as hard as concrete, yet have some flex that is less wearing on the craft.
Not a dessert. That is defined as "A usually sweet course or dish, as of fruit, ice cream, or pastry, served at the end of a meal." and of course no plane can take off and land on a pastry. Unless that is what you meant.
So I guess you were right then. You could neither hide nor take off an airliner from a bowl of ice cream or a tart... or any other dessert.

[Trust but Verify]

I'm with you on this. These stories about this missing aircraft are legion. But let us pretend for a moment this report is accurate. How desperate do you have to be to try and take one airliner out by crashing another into it? Pretty desperate, I'd say. That would also be good news.