Assalamualaikum
It's been more than 72 hours yet still no positive news about MH370. In the meantime, I'm getting tired receiving a lot of untrue news/stories/rumours spread via whatssap, fb, blog etc. Although some of them sound so promising (which we pray hard that they might be true. Amin), it's still deemed inappropriate at this such devastating time
In Allah we put our hope, dua & trust. May He ease their affairs, protect them & make them come back safe & sound. Amin ya rabbal alamin... Please keep MH370 in our prayers because they mean a lot to the victims' families & friends
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As events surrounding the disappearance of Malasian Airlines flight
MH370 unfold - we look at some of the most unusual aircraft incidents
through history
Events surrounding the disappearance and
possible crash of Malasian Airlines flight MH370 are not yet clear.
It has emerged that two passengers on the flight were travelling using stolen passports.
The owners of the passports have been contacted by authorities and confirmed to be safe and well.
A 12-mile oil slick has been discovered by the Vietnamese Navy - the first piece of evidence that flight MH370 may have crashed.
You can follow
updates from the incident at our live blog here.
In the meantime, here's our roundup of the mysteries surrounding plane crashes and disappearances through history.
10 - Amelia Earhart disappears while circumnavigating the globe
Pioneer: Earhart vanished while attempting to circumnavigate the globe
Pioneering American aviator Amelia
Earhart disappeared in her Lockheed Electra on July 2nd 1937, while she
and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were trying to circumnavigate the
globe.
Earhart, who was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, disappeared near Howland Island in the central Pacific Ocean.
Theories
about Earhart's fate have fascinated researchers - and nutcases - ever
since. While most think she simply ran out of fuel and crashed into the
sea, there's also the theory that she was a spy for Franklin D Roosevelt
and was captured by the Japanese.
Others claim the plane crashed
on a Japanese island, stranding Earhart, who eventually died - and her
body was carried off by sand crabs. Some think she survived the flight,
moved to New Jersey and changed he name. And, of course, there's a
theory she was abducted by aliens - as dramatised in The 37's, a 1995
episode of Star Trek:
Voyager.
9 - Glenn Miller's Air Force Plane disappears over the English Channel
.
Performances: Miller was travelling to entertain troops in France when his plane disappeared
.
Legendary big-band leader Glenn Miller gave a string of performances in England for Allied forces with the US Army Air Force Band in the summer of 1944.
He
spent his last night alive in Milton Ernest, near Bedford on December
14th 1944. The next day he was to fly to Paris to play for servicemen in
France. They departed from RAF Tinwood Farm and disappeared over the
English Channel.
Again, many theories about the fate of his single
engine monoplane have taken hold since then. Some research says his
aircraft was caught in a 'friendly fire' incident, after a flight of
Lancaster Bombers aborted a raid on Siegen, Germany, jettisoning 100,000
incendiary bombs over the Channel before landing.
But journalist
Udo Ulfkotte, writing in German newspaper Bild, came up with a more
salacious and less believable theory - that Miller had, in fact made it
to France, but died of a heart attack in a Parisian Brothel.
8 - Flight 19 and the Bermuda Triangle
.
Mystery: The Flight 19 incident sparked the legend of the Bermuda Triangle
.
On the afternoon of December 5th, 1945, six disappeared into thin air - and started the legend of the Bermuda Triangle.
A
training mission of five Navy Avenger planes, led by experienced flight
instructor Charles Taylor, took off from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
An
hour and a half into the mission, pilots reported that they had become
disorientated and couldn't recognise landmarks below them.
In radio transmissions, Taylor told the Naval Air Station at Fort Lauderdale both of his compasses were out of action.
Despite
the efforts of the Air Sation controllers, the team were unable to find
their bearings. As the weather deteriorated, they couldn't find
landfall and ditched into the sea, with the deaths of all 14 airmen and
crew.
Weirder still, one of the planes sent out to look for the lost training mission also disappeared.
The aircraft, a PBM Mariner sea plane, which took off at 7.30pm and was never heard from again. All 13 crew were presumed dead.
7 - Star Dust and the mystery Morse code
Cryptic: The meaning of the radio operator's final message is still not known
When the BSAA Star Dust, a civilian version of the Lancaster
Bomber, disappeared during a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina to
Santiago, Chile, it left behind a great many unanswered questions.
The
aircraft, owned by British South American Airways (BSAA) and piloted by
Reginald Cook, a distinguished air force pilot, left Buenos Aires at
1.46pm on August 2nd, 1947 and headed over the Andes mountains.
The
plane never reached its destination, but the radio operator managed to
send out one final cryptic morse code message - reading "STENDEC"
-before it disappeared.
Theories about what happened to the plane -
and the meaning of the cryptic final message - have grown over the
years, and include UFO attacks, sabotage and the deliberate explosion of
the flight to destroy diplomatic documents carried by a passenger.
More likely is that the plane accidentally flew into a near vertical snow field, which caused an avalanche burying the wreck.
The
Star Dust wasn't discovered until 50 years later, when two Argentine
mountaineers found fragments of the engine and shreds of clothing.
6 - The Star Tiger disappears in the Bermuda Triangle
A second BSAA plane, the Star Tiger, disappeared flying from Santa Maria in Azores to Bermuda on 30th January 1948.
The
flight took off in strong winds to take their 25 passengers - including
World War II hero Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham - on their 12 hour
journey, flying low to avoid the winds and following a Lancastrian plane
which was to keep a lookout for bad weather.
The plane was blown
off course and had to fly directly into a gale to reach Bermuda with
enough fuel remaining. The lookout plane arrived safely just after 4am -
but the Star Tiger was never seen or heard from again.
It's
thought that considering the low altitude, a strong gust of wind may
have blown them into the sea - or that a faulty altimeter combined with
tiredness from the long flight could have caused them to fly into the
water.
5 - The mystery of Flight 191
.
This one's cheating really - it doesn't just apply to a single flight, but to a number of incidents over more than 40 years concerning planes with that number.
One of the most deadly plane crashes in American aviation history was the 1979 crash of American Airlines Flight 191, which crashed minutes after takeoff at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, killing all 258 passengers and 13 crew.
Other flight 191 disasters included experimental plane X-15 Flight 191, which crashed in 1967 killing its pilot and JetBlue Airways flight 191 in 2012, during which the captain had an alleged panic attack, and had to be restrained by passengers. Some superstitious airlines have retired the flight number 191.
4 - The mystery disappearance of the Star Ariel
Star Dust: An Avro Tudor Mk.IVB Super Trader similar to the aircraft that disappeared
.
Yet another BSAA plane, the Star Ariel, vanished during a flight from Bermuda to Jamaica on January 17th, 1949.
It
was a similar plane to the Star Tiger, and set off into clear skies and
no turbulence - but was plagued from communication problems throughout
the flight.
It never reached its destination and the search for survivors of the 20 passengers and crew was abandoned on January 25th.
An
investigation concluded the cause of the accident was unknown, but Don
Bennett, former director of BSAA claimed both Star Tiger and Star Ariel
had been sabotaged by a "known war-registered saboteur."
He also said Prime Minister Clement Atlee had personally ordered all enquiries into the incidents to be shut down.
3 - Alive: The Andes disaster of flight 571
.
Alive: Members of a Uruguayan Rugby Team were among the passengers of Flight 571 which crashed into the Andes.
A chartered Uruguayan Air Force plane carrying 45 passengers
and crew - including a Rugby Union team from Montevideo - crashed into
the Andes mountains in bad weather.
Of the 45 people on the plane, 12 died in the crash.
Six
more died in the days afterward, and a further eight in an avalanche
that ran through the plane's wreckage, where they were taking shelter.
The remaining 16 passengers only survived by resorting to cannibalism, feeding on the corpses of their dead friends.
They
were not found until 72 days after the crash, when two passengers made a
ten-day trek across mountainous terrain, eventually finding a Chilean
travelling salesman who gave them food and alerted authorities.
The story was immortalised in the 1993 film Alive.
2 - EgyptAir flight 990
.
Recorder: Flight 990 crashed into the Atlantic, killing 217
Mystery surrounds the crash of EgyptAir flight 990, which left
John F Kennedy International Airport in New York on 31st October 1999
bound for Cairo.
The Boeing 767 crashed into the Atlantic south of Massachusetts killing all 217 passengers and crew.
Gamil
el-Batouty, the co-pilot of the flight had just been reprimanded for
sexual misconduct by an EgyptAir executive that was a passenger on the
plane.
The chief of the airline's pilot group, Hatem Rushdy told
el-Batouty this would be his "last flight" - to which the co-pilot
replied "this is the last flight for you too."
Later, when the
pilot got up to use the bathroom, flight recorder recordings heard
el-Batouty say softly, "I rely on God" before switching off the
autopilot and pushing the plane into a dive.
He repeated the
phrase as the plane descended. The captain returned to the cockpit, but
was unable to pull the plane out of the dive.
The US National
Trasportation Safety Board ruled that the crash was a result of
el-Batouty's actions, but did not determine a motive for them.
1 - Air France flight 447
.
Stalled: Air France Flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic killing 288 passengers and crew
An Airbus A330 from Rio to Paris carrying 288 passengers and crew from Rio to Paris vanished over the Atlantic in 2009.
The final report into the crash suggested ice crystals obstructed tubes in the aircraft, causing the autopilot to disconnect.
The
crew attempted to recover from the problem, but failed and stalled,
causing the aircraft to plunge into the ocean. 50 bodies were recovered
from the sea in the months following the crash.
The black box
recorders of Flight 447 were eventually found in May 2011, along with a
further 104 bodies. The bodies of 74 passengers still remain
unrecovered.
