The most mysterious plane crash ever. The most mysterious plane crashes and disappearances in the history of aviation. Mutnovskaya geothermal power plant

Let's start with a case that can even be called almost hilarious. Unfortunately, this cannot be said about many of the other stories on our list.

Company airliner british airways was heading from English Birmingham to Spanish Malaga, taking on board 87 passengers and crew. He did not manage to soar in peace for a long time. Already 13 minutes after takeoff, the glass of the cockpit was torn off by a stream of air, and the crew commander was literally sucked into the window opening. A man is stuck in the windshield, half leaning out of a flying jet!

Then something incredible happened. The crew members, who reacted in time, grabbed the captain by the legs, preventing him from falling overboard. It is clear that no one will survive in such conditions, but, firstly, this would not allow the liner to completely depressurize, and most importantly, if they released the pilot, the body could ram the vital elements of the aircraft at full speed. Then things would have turned out quite horribly. But everything was going so lousy, especially since the cockpit door was blown off and the pieces fell on the console.

The crew began to calm the passengers and request an emergency landing from the ground services. The plane landed at Southampton 25 minutes after the start of the flight. All this time, the flight attendant held his icy comrade.

Immediately after landing, it turned out that the captain had a pulse, and he was urgently hospitalized. And, as the song says, they brought him home, he turned out to be alive! The team not only landed the plane, but also saved everyone on board! The co-pilot, the stewardess and all their colleagues immediately became national heroes. Almost all of them returned back to civil aviation.

The cause of the incident turned out to be the gouging of a mechanic, who, when replacing glass, took bolts of the wrong size from the warehouse.

Boeing 737, April 28, 1988

Imagine a banal small-town flight Hilo - Honolulu with 89 relaxed passengers and six crew members (where without them!). At the 23rd minute of flight at a speed of 500 kilometers per hour, a colossal piece of skin passenger compartment tore off and carried away to the beautiful far away. Everyone who was in the liner found himself face to face with a riot of air flow and a temperature of minus 45 degrees. But this is Hawaii, the passengers are dressed in a tropical way!

The team was not at a loss and immediately began to descend for emergency landing. The most terrible thing was that the instruments showed: the chassis was also faulty! Fortunately, the airport controllers saw that the landing gear actually came out of its niche safely, and transmitted good news to the ship. Everyone survived, except for a single unfortunate stewardess, who was blown away by a stream of air.

Cause of the accident: metal fatigue and corrosion. Ride, they say, in a convertible ...

A310, March 23, 1994

One of the most terrible chapters in the history of Russian civil aviation. Aeroflot operated flight number SU593 from Moscow to Hong Kong. After four hours of flight, the plane disappeared from radar over Mezhdurechensk, that is, in the Kemerovo region.

Air crashes are always a nightmare, but when the reasons for this were revealed, even the hairs of the world-wise forensic experts and aviation experts stood on end. The liner was in perfect order. Weather conditions too. Just in the midst of the flight, the pilots let their children and friends into the cockpit, and not only let them in, but also let them steer. 39-year-old pilot Yaroslav Kudrinsky, violating all possible instructions and simply the requirements of common sense, first put his daughter at the helm, and then his son.

The relaxed crew was fully confident that the plane was controlled by an autopilot, but the automatics turned off due to too sharp play with the helm of fifteen-year-old Eldar, the son of Kudrinsky. Moreover, it took too long for the small brains of the pilots to understand what was happening an emergency situation. Further, trying to fix it, they panicked and behaved as irrationally as possible. Tumbling in the air (imagine what it's like for unbelted passengers!), The liner crashed to the ground. All 63 passengers and 12 crew members died.

The subsequent investigation showed that if the pilots had not panicked, but had let the liner's automation work according to the prescribed algorithm, the plane would have leveled itself and calmly continued the flight!

There is a phenomenon in our world worse than driving minibuses.

Boeing 747, August 12, 1985

The largest single-aircraft crash in terms of the number of victims occurred, oddly enough, in a country whose workers are famous for their meticulousness, pedantry and professionalism - in Japan. And it's an incredibly sad story.

A JAL Boeing 747 was making a short domestic flight JAL from Tokyo to Osaka city. The flight there is only 500 kilometers, that is, less than an hour, but this is an incredibly popular route during the holidays, which is why the Boeing 747. 12 minutes after the liner left the airport, almost all key flight control and stabilization systems failed. Even duplicates! The pilots could not understand what was happening, they kept the plane in the air with superhuman skill, using only maneuvering engines and flaps. The liner constantly tossed, dropped and shook. 32 minutes of such a flight seemed to passengers worse than hell. If the pilots knew what the problem was, they would have become even worse: the Boeing's tail stabilizer was completely torn off, the plane was doomed. It is enough to look at a photo taken from the ground so that even a layman who is far from aviation understands this.

The plane crashed into a mountain 112 kilometers from Tokyo, some of the passengers miraculously survived, but rescue operations were organized truly ugly, help came late, and only four managed to be saved. A total of 520 people died.

The cause of the disaster was called the careless repair of the tail section by ground services with a deviation from the instructions.

A330, August 24, 2001

Now about the good. Record-breaking planning of an airliner with idle engines was demonstrated during this incident.

An Airbus A330-243 was heading from Toronto to Lisbon with three hundred people on board ( airline Air Transat), at the sixth hour of the flight, the crew suddenly encountered a fantastic fact: under them Atlantic Ocean, and they have not a gram of fuel!

Everything that followed would have been considered an invention of Hollywood screenwriters if it were not true. One of the pilots remembered that 320 kilometers away from them, a military air base had spread its hangars on Azores where they turned. For 217 kilometers to the target, one of the engines had to be turned off. A few minutes later - the second. Unfortunately, there were no other engines, as well as sources of fuel, in this aircraft.

By the way, so that when the engines are inactive, instruments and radio communications do not turn off, the aircraft are provided with an ingenious emergency power supply system: something like a dynamo-weather vane, which is released from the body and spins under the pressure of the oncoming air flow.

Everyone was saved by the phenomenally rich experience, training and ingenuity of the crew commander. He was able to calculate, on the fly, with the highest accuracy, the gliding coefficients of an aircraft without thrust, so as not only to reach the runway, but also so that its speed would allow it to land safely. Moreover, no one, for obvious reasons, would have presented them with a second landing attempt.

Despite the calculations and maneuvers, the landing speed was still slightly higher than the recommended one, the plane slipped an extra kilometer behind the runway, and almost all of its tires burst. Of the 306 people, no one was hurt! The pilots were awarded and bear the title of record holders who kept a passenger aircraft in the air on a glider force for 120 kilometers!

The culprits of the accident are, as in most similar stories, ground technicians who messed up during the installation of the hydraulic system and provoked a leak.

One of the catastrophes that shocked the whole world was the crash of the Germanwings A320. On this moment the main version is the assumption that the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, who suffered from depression, deliberately provoked the fall.

EgyptAir Flight 990

The dead plane 7 years before the crash

On October 31, 1999, a Boeing 767-366ER flew from Los Angeles to Cairo with a stopover in New York. There were 217 people on board, mostly US and Egyptian citizens, including 33 Egyptian officers returning from exercises. The first pilot of the vessel, Ahmed El-Habashi, left the cockpit at 01:50 and went to the restroom. At this time, the co-pilot Gamil El-Batuti turned off both engines - the plane began to dive. He said the phrase "I trust in God" 7 times.

The first pilot returned to the cockpit and asked his partner: “What is this? Have you turned off the engines?”, after which he sat down in a chair and tried to gain altitude, but the co-pilot at the same moment continued to direct the ship down. At 01:52, the plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, 100 km from Nantucket Island. Everyone on board died.

The Egyptian side asked the US National Transportation Safety Administration for help in the investigation. According to the preliminary conclusion, it turned out that the catastrophe was deliberate. The Egyptians insisted on continuing the investigation, as they refused to accept this version.

As a result, the American and Egyptian commissions came to two different conclusions: a deliberate disaster and a technical failure, respectively. The American side insisted that the pilot had suicidal tendencies. However, in this case, the following fact was incomprehensible: the co-pilot flew to the family, having bought gifts for his wife and children.

Conspiracy theorists have put forward the version that it was a terrorist attack aimed at killing 33 members of the Egyptian General Staff who were on board.

star dust

A small British South American Airways (BSAA) Avro Lancastrian transport plane went missing on 2 August 1947. He was heading from Buenos Aires to Santiago. There were 6 passengers and 5 crew members on board. Shortly before the disappearance of the ship, the radio operator transmitted the message: "ETA SANTIAGO 17.45 HRS STENDEC". After that, communication with the aircraft was lost.

Chilean and Argentinean teams were sent to search for the ship, but no wreckage was found. Then the experts put forward several assumptions: the plane could become a victim of sabotage against the BSAA company; there was a bomb on board, blowing up which could destroy diplomatic documents carried by one of the passengers; the ship was hijacked or destroyed by a UFO.

It was possible to find the wreckage only 50 years later: in 1998, two climbers discovered the remains of an aircraft engine on Mount Tupungato, and in 2000, in the same place, the Argentines discovered a propeller, a landing gear wheel and human remains. The victims were identified through DNA analysis.

The version of abduction by aliens has disappeared. Experts suggested that the pilots were unable to determine the location and began to descend, while they had not yet passed the high mountain ranges. As a result, the collision occurred while the aircraft was flying at full speed. However, so far it has not been possible to decipher the second part of the radio operator's message, the experts did not understand what "STENDEC" meant.

Boeing 747 explosion over New York

Collected debris

On July 17, 1996, a Trans World Airlines Boeing 747?131 exploded over the Atlantic Ocean while flying on the New York-Paris-Rome route. 12 minutes after taking off from Kennedy Airport, the ship exploded. All 230 people on board were killed. First of all, it was suggested that it was a terrorist attack.

The flight took off at about 20:19, and after 11 minutes received an indication of a climb of 15,000 feet, and at 20:31:12 both flight recorders stopped recording. At the same time, the plane disappeared from radar.
At 20:31:50, the Boston control center received a signal from another vessel flying in the area that an explosion had occurred.

According to the pilot, the plane "just fell down into the water." At the same time, similar reports began to arrive from other pilots flying at that time near the crash site. They reported that they saw or heard an explosion, and also observed burning debris falling into the water. About a third of the witnesses noted that they saw a luminous strip approaching the plane from below.

A group of experts immediately went to the crash site. There were no survivors. An operation began to search for the bodies of the victims and the wreckage of the fuselage. It was also possible to find recorders. When deciphering the black box records, the experts heard the phrase: “Look at that frenzied fuel consumption indicator on number 4 ... see that?”

The final report noted that an explosion was the probable cause of the disaster. fuel tank as a result of the ignition of a combustible mixture of fuel and air in the tank. This happened, according to the commission, due to the short circuit of the wires outside the fuel tank. However, not everyone was satisfied with this version. In the last seconds of the recorder recording, a very loud and short sound is heard. In addition, according to the testimony of some witnesses, a luminous beam was rising towards the plane.

As a result, there appeared alternative versions disasters, according to which the aircraft could explode as a result of a bomb on board, or could be shot down by a US Navy missile. Adherents of these theories draw attention to the fact that the FBI, when interviewing witnesses, did not keep audio recordings, instead they made a written report, which these same witnesses were not allowed to look at later.

Missing Malaysian Boeing

Flight search diameter 370 Malaysia Airlines

On March 8, 2014, a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777?200ER went missing on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. There were 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board.

At the time of the disappearance, the plane was over South China Sea, And last message from the board was: "Good night, Malaysian three seven zero." A few minutes after that, communication with the aircraft was interrupted, and it disappeared from the radar. Someone turned off the devices transmitting information about the movement of the ship. The crew did not report any problems on board, and up to this point the flight had proceeded normally.

Later, Malaysian military radar spotted the plane in the Strait of Malacca. With the help of technical data, which continued to flow through satellites, experts determined a possible course: one was pointed north, the other south. However, the authorities of Thailand, Vietnam and China reported that the liner did not cross them. air space, in connection with which the version of the "northern corridor" was discarded. The south remained, that is, the ship could fly to southern part indian ocean where it probably crashed.

During the investigation, it turned out that other people got on board using the passports of two passengers. The owners of the documents explained that they had lost the documents in Thailand. It turned out that under the names of Italian and Austrian citizens, 18-year-old Iranian Puria Nur Mohammad Merdad and 29-year-old Iranian Seyid Mohammed Raza Delawar were on board.

The search operation deployed over the South China Sea did not produce any results. On March 24, 2014, the Malaysian authorities announced that the Boeing crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, and all on board were killed. However, nothing confirms this version, except for the calculation of the flight path based on satellite data.

According to the official version, it was a plane hijacking. However, at the moment, neither the persons who could have committed such an act, nor their motives have been established.

At the moment, the investigation is ongoing.

Child at the helm

Flight 593 wreckage

On the night of March 22-23, 1994, an Airbus A310-308 of Aeroflot airlines crashed near Mezhdurechensk, flying from Moscow to Hong Kong. There were 75 people on board.

It was established that three and a half hours after takeoff, the crew commander Yaroslav Kudrinskoy let his children into the cockpit - daughter Yana and son Eldar. First, a girl was put in the chair, who did not touch the steering wheel, and then the 15-year-old son of the commander sat in the pilot's seat. The Eldar turned the steering wheel from side to side, and then for about 30 seconds, pressed hard on it. As a result of the boy's actions, the autopilot was partially disabled, and the plane banked to the right. At that time, the co-pilot was in the cockpit, who was filming the children on video, as well as a friend of the Kudrinsky family, Makarov.

The aircraft was banking at 1.5 degrees per second, and after the bank reached 45 degrees, the pilots realized that the autopilot was disabled. Due to the high Gs and bank angle, the crew did not immediately manage to take their seats, at which time the boy, who was still at the helm, followed conflicting commands from his father, the co-pilot and Makarov. The bank reached 90 degrees, after which the aircraft began to lose altitude. The co-pilot brought the craft out of the stall by lowering the bow, but by then the plane was already too low. As a result, he caught on the edges of trees and collapsed in the forest, 20 km from Mezhdurechensk.

Before deciphering the black boxes, there were suggestions that the plane could collide with a certain celestial body or become a victim of a UFO, then there were versions of a terrorist attack and depressurization of the cabin.

The commission could not believe that the plane crashed because of a child at the controls

However, the investigation, which whole year, confirmed that the plane crashed due to the fault of the pilot, who let his son “steer”. After this incident, the experts thought about the role of the co-pilot, who was supposed to control the situation, and not leave the seat.

In aviation, unfortunately, not everything depends on the experience of the crew and the serviceability of the liner. Very often the so-called "human factor" acts as the arbiter of fate. But often, when to determine real reason a plane crash is not possible, everyone simply writes off this “human factor”.

Investigations of air crashes in the pre-reform period were a state secret, which was strictly guarded. For the public, their results remained a secret with seven seals. Today the situation has changed considerably. The Society of Air Accident Investigators (ORAP) has been established in Russia. Every year, its members hold conferences at which the smallest detail of the tragic events is openly discussed, every, even minor manipulation of the pilots, the work of all aircraft systems seconds before the fatal meeting with the ground is analyzed.

But is it less of a disaster? Has it become easier to investigate the disasters themselves?

Despite the most sophisticated methods of researchers and the accumulated experience, there are no less mysteries and mysteries that have not been answered, despite all efforts. There are many examples of this.

So, for example, the version of the death of the Yak-40 aircraft in 1997 in Azerbaijan is the destruction of oxygen cylinders by firearms. We even managed to detain a soldier who fired from a machine gun at that time and in that place.

As was established by the official investigation, round holes with a diameter of 8 mm were found in both cylinders of the aircraft. In addition, with the help of an examination, copper plating was found in the cylinders and on the holes themselves, which confirms the bullet damage due to the fact that the bullet just has a copper sheath. Forensic examination also confirmed the "bullet" version. At first glance, the conclusion is obvious - the culprit of the disaster and the death of people is a soldier who fired in the wrong place and landed in the oxygen tanks of the aircraft. But when examining the hole on an electron microscope, it turned out that the “bullet” not only entered, but also exited through it, which in itself is unlikely. In addition, they did not find an outlet, allegedly for the reason that during the fall the tank was destroyed on the side where the outlet should be. The bullet itself was also not found.

This mystery has not yet been solved, but one thing is certain - the soldier is not to blame. And this is far from the only case.

So, in the same 1997, the American Boeing-747 was supposed to fly from Odessa to the Greek Thessaloniki, but it was found to have a malfunction. Therefore, the Yak-42 was called from Lvov. It was he who set off at night along the route that became the last for him and the passengers. It was led by the most experienced pilot Starodubtsev, besides, there was a very experienced pilot-instructor on board.

We flew safely to Thessaloniki. It was found that the aircraft at an altitude of 250 meters crossed runway. And then something completely incomprehensible happened - the plane suddenly began to move away from the airport. The crew was instructed to turn right to the airport radio beacon, gaining altitude up to 1800 meters. The crew responded to requests from the ground that the aircraft was performing a maneuver and was located where the dispatchers indicated to it in order to make a go-around approach. However, in reality, this was absolutely not the case - in fact, he was flying away from the airfield, towards his death. The tragedy occurred at a distance of 70 kilometers above the mountains. All crew members and passengers were killed. Not only Russians, but also specialists from Greece and Ukraine took part in the investigation of this plane crash. "Black boxes" were deciphered both in Russia and in Germany. But, despite this, it has not yet been possible to give a clear answer to the question of why the aircraft made this maneuver.

Until now, the mystery of the Irkutsk tragedy has not been solved either. On December 6, 1997, an An-124 military transport aircraft fell on a residential area during takeoff. Within a few seconds after the aircraft took off from the runway, the third and first engines were turned off, after which the second engine also failed. The crew made an attempt to keep the plane on one remaining engine, but it was unsuccessful. The disaster claimed the lives of 72 people - fifteen crew members, eight passengers and dozens of people from two destroyed houses. In this terrible tragedy unsolved mysteries, complex and controversial riddles. Attempts to find out the cause of the engine failure were unsuccessful. Both flight recorders were badly damaged. The reasons for their exclusion, both experimentally and by means of objective control, have not been finally established.

Why do engines fail? The reason for the failure of aircraft technology is often called inexplicable to science phenomena, anomalous phenomena. strange natural phenomena often provoke plane crashes, and sometimes planes even disappear without a trace. It is impossible to say unequivocally whether there is some truth in such assumptions or whether it is all false. Of course, most accidents occur just because of design flaws, an unreliable security system and other nuances that at first seem not so important, but in the end cost the lives of hundreds of people. However, one cannot rule out a certain mysticism, and a supernatural factor, on which many continue to insist. We cannot yet prove or disprove the involvement of certain supernatural forces in the death aircraft. If reasons like weather, military operations, mistakes of pilots or dispatchers are quite understandable and explainable, then the unexpected failure of the on-board computer is perhaps the most terrible. According to skeptics, all phenomena can be found scientific justification. Only, apparently, scientists are not yet able to do it.

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The aircraft is considered safe transport. However, air crashes are not uncommon. Each one is followed by an investigation. However, some plane crashes still no one can explain.

Squadron Avenger

The most famous of its mysteries occurred over the infamous Bermuda Triangle on December 5, 1945. The so-called Departure 19 was a training flight of five Avenger torpedo bombers led by experienced flight instructor Charles Taylor.

Avenger aircraft took off from Fort Lauderdale on December 5, 1945 at 14:10. was clear, the flight was normal. But already at 15:40 the squadron deviated from the course, the pilots stopped recognizing the area. According to radio communications, Taylor's compass was out of order, appearing to be confusing the Florida Keys with the Bahamas. The control center tried to redirect Taylor back to Fort Lauderdale, but Charles continued to lead them in a chaotic direction, deeper into the ocean: “I hear you very faintly. Now we are flying on a course of two hundred and seventy degrees.

Soon the controller lost contact with five aircraft and since then no one has seen or heard from them. The most interesting thing is that Taylor ordered: "All aircraft stay close ... if the coast does not appear, we will have to splash down ... When anyone has less than 10 gallons left, we all descend together." That is, the version that the lack of fuel is to blame for the crash of the planes disappears. More frighteningly, the rescue plane sent to rescue Taylor's team went missing that same night. Many believe that it exploded in flight, as the car simply disappeared from the radar.

Interestingly, Taylor had tried to cancel the flight the day before. He was denied. The inexplicable circumstances surrounding the disaster gave reason to prescribe the death of the squadron to paranormal properties.

"Star dust"

Another mysterious disappearance in the history of aviation happened over the Andes. A civilian Star Dast aircraft owned by British South American flew from Buenos Aires to Santiago in 1947, but suddenly disappeared somewhere in the mountains just a couple of minutes before landing.

In the last moments of the flight, the radio operator transmitted the cryptic message "STENDEC". More from the missing plane was not a rumor or a spirit. The wreckage, despite a long search, was also not found. Most notably, the Star Dust airliner was a converted Avro Lancastrian military transport aircraft and could climb to over 6 km and reach speeds of up to 500 km / h, overcoming mountain peaks should not have been a problem for him.

In 1998, a group of climbers accidentally stumbled upon a fragment of the engine cover with the inscription "OLLS-ROYCE". The search for the liner in the specified area resumed. The aircraft was soon discovered. New official version read: Star Dast veered off course and crashed into cloud-covered mountains in poor visibility. However, the secret of the word "Stendec" remained unsolved.

"Flying Tiger"

In 1962, Flying Tiger Flight 739 was commissioned by the US Army to transport soldiers and supplies from California to Saigon, Vietnam. After refueling in Guam, the plane took off and soon literally disappeared over the Philippine Sea. The weather was clear and there were no reports of help, as was the case with the Malaysian Boeing.

Search activities, in which four types of military forces participated, were unsuccessful, all 107 people on the plane were declared dead. The wreckage of the "tiger" was never found. The missing facts were replaced by rumors and conjectures. Some eyewitnesses claimed to have seen a bright flash of light near the supposed location of the aircraft. In the context cold war and conflicts in Vietnam, versions of sabotage appeared. Another explanation was considered a malfunction of the engine, which allegedly lost power three days before the last flight.

Aborted takeoff

Sabotage is seen in death civil aircraft operating Trans World Airlines Flight 800 in 1996. The airliner exploded and crashed 12 minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy Airport, taking the lives of 230 people with it.

The investigation of the disaster took 4 years, after which it was determined that a fault in the electrical wiring caused a spark that ignited the fuel. It would seem that everything is clear, but the eyewitnesses of the event, who gave their testimony to the FBI, unanimously claim that they saw a beam of light rise to the plane, after which a fireball appeared.

This evidence is believed by some to prove that the plane was shot down by a missile during a fleet exercise that was taking place at the same time near Long Island. There are also versions that the US intelligence agencies deliberately hid traces of explosives on the remains of the liner.

Air "Titanic"

Like the infamous , which was considered unsinkable, the Airbus A330 operating Air France Flight 447 on 1 June 2009 was to be one of the most safe aircraft throughout history. However, for inexplicable reasons, during the flight Rio de Janeiro - Paris, the liner fell into the Atlantic Ocean.

There were no signals for help, no one knew what had happened until the pilots got in touch with the control room at the appointed time. As a result of the disaster, 228 people died, and three days of mourning were declared in France.

The cause of the crash remained unclear. The investigation into the causes of the tragedy seemed impossible for a long time - the wreckage scattered for kilometers along the ocean floor. Only in 2011, a specially hired private company was able to collect all the remains.

The French fleet pulled out black boxes and hundreds of dead bodies from the bottom.
According to the records, the aircraft was lost due to a technical malfunction (frost on the pitot tubes), as a result of which the autopilot had to be turned off; and due to the subsequent inconsistency of the actions of the crew. One thing that remains unclear is how the three experienced pilots lost control in a standard turbulence situation, and why they kept the nose of the aircraft in an elevated position during the “stall”, although in such cases it is lowered down.

Man has long been fascinated by flight, and thanks to modern technology this dream has become a reality. However, everything has its price. A machine, like a person, is prone to make mistakes sometimes, and even minor mistakes can have deadly consequences. While we try to learn from every disaster and improve our equipment, there are some disasters that leave us wondering what happened.

Flight 19

Flight 19 began as a routine training mission for the US Navy, and ended with six aircraft missing without a trace, giving rise to the legend of bermuda triangle. The five Naval Avengers that departed for Flight 19 (led by Charles Taylor) took off from Fort Lauderdale, Florida on December 5, 1945. The weather was clear and there were no signs of trouble. But after 90 minutes, the pilots were disoriented, they could not recognize the landmarks below. According to the radio broadcast, Taylor's compass began to malfunction and seemed to be confusing the Florida Keys with the Bahamas. The command tower attempted to direct Taylor back towards Fort Lauderdale, and his students asked him to go west, but Taylor continued to lead them in strange directions further out to sea. Ultimately, the tower lost contact with these five aircraft, and none of them have ever been found to this day. More surprisingly, the rescue plane also went missing that night in search of Taylor's crew. Many assume that they simply exploded in the air, as they simply disappeared from the radar. One of the most curious things about this incident is that Taylor, without explanation, asked to be removed from that mission. The Navy rejected his request and he was forced to continue on his fateful mission. What was Taylor's reason for not wanting to fly that day?

Flight 990 EgyptAir
On Halloween Day 1999, EgyptAir Flight 990 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 217 on board. The Egyptian authorities (ECAA) investigated the crash, but since they had limited resources and the accident occurred in international waters, they asked for help from the US National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB agreed to help and a deliberate violation of the rules was discovered, after which they decided to involve the FBI in the study. The Egyptians refused and insisted that the NTSB continue the investigation. However, when evidence of the crime kept coming to light, the Egyptians decided to start their own forensics. As you might guess, the American NTSB and the Egyptian ECAA came to two different conclusions. The US decided that the co-pilot was suicidal and deliberately destroyed the plane for personal, unknown reasons. The Egyptians reduced the incident to a mechanical failure. This explanation did not satisfy conspiracy theorists who touted ideas of terrorism and conspiracies. They were inclined to believe that everything was planned to kill 33 members of the Egyptian government who were on board. Although we may never know exactly what happened, the final transcripts of the pilots' conversations give us quite good idea. The pilot says, “What is this? What is this? Did you turn off the engines? Meanwhile, the co-pilot replies, “I rely on God.”

star dust
The Star Dust was a civilian version of the Lancaster bomber registered with British South American Airways. In 1947, the plane was flying from Buenos Aires to Santiago, Chile, but disappeared into the Andes minutes before its scheduled landing. At the last moment, the plane's radio operator broadcast one final, puzzling Morse code message: "STENDEC". No trace of StarDust was found, and after an extensive search of the alleged crash site, investigators concluded they would never know what happened to the plane. Fifty years later, travelers discovered the wreckage of the plane in a melting glacier. Stardust strayed off course in low visibility, crashing into a cloudy area by mistake mountain range. The discovery of the wreckage made it possible to discard versions of sabotage and foreign abduction, but the meaning of "STENDEC" remains a mystery to this day.

Flight 191
Flight 191 does not refer to a specific disaster, but rather to incidents that occurred on flights numbered 191. In fact, there have been so many disasters that, as with hotel owners who abandoned the 13th floor, some superstitious airlines have completely done away with number "191". Since the 1960s, five flights with the number 191 have ended in fatal crashes, including the worst plane crash in American history: American Airlines Flight 191, which killed 273 people. Last time, in 2012, JetBlue Airways Flight 191 made headlines after the pilot went insane during the flight and started ranting about Jesus, terrorists, and 9/11. He was kicked out of the cockpit by the co-pilot and twisted by the passengers. Later, he was placed in a psychiatric hospital. Although the failure of flights ending in 191 is most likely a coincidence, numerologists are still trying to decipher the hidden meaning of these numbers.

Flight 739 Flying Tiger
In 1962, the US military chartered Flying Tiger Flight 739 to transport supplies and soldiers from California to Saigon, Vietnam. After stopping to refuel in Guam, the L-1049 took off and disappeared over the Philippine Sea. There was no distress signal and the weather was clear - it seemed that the plane had simply disappeared. After a search by four branches of the armed forces, all 107 people on board were presumed dead. The flying tiger has never been found. Because no remains have been found, investigators are unable to determine what happened to Flight 739. In addition to conspiracy theory speculation, some witnesses claim they saw smoke and a bright flash of light at the aircraft's expected position.

USAir Flight 427
The 132 passengers who boarded USAir Flight 427 were expecting a short trip from Chicago to Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, within 10 minutes of takeoff, the plane crashed inexplicably at speeds approaching 500 kilometers per hour. All 132 people on board were killed. It was one of the deadliest disasters in American history, and the sight of the devastation terrified even the most battered veterans of the war. Usually investigators can determine the cause of a crash within a week or two, but it took four years for Flight 427 to determine the cause of the failure. The auditors looked into every theory imaginable and ultimately decided that a helm defect had caused the pilots to lose control. Unraveling that mystery, another question arose: Did USAir know about the helm problems in their 737 aircraft? Similar disasters already happened in the 1990s and some argued that USAir could have prevented the tragedy. 427 if they had examined other catastrophes more carefully. Many families of the victims have sued USAir Inc. and Boeing Co. The two companies decided to avoid litigation by paying out nearly $50 million.

Flight 800 TWA
In 1996, TWA Flight 800 crashed 12 minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy Airport, killing 230 people. After a four year study National Council The Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) concluded that faulty wiring caused the spark that ignited the aircraft's fuel. However, this explanation is contradicted by hundreds of witnesses who say they saw the streak of light hit the plane from below. These reports have led some to believe that the plane was actually hit by a missile. Who could shoot down a civilian plane? One of the prevailing theories is that the US military mistakenly hit it during a naval exercise that was scheduled off the coast of Long Island on the same day. Other mysteries surrounding the case include explosive residue on aircraft parts, claims that the FBI manipulated the evidence, and inconsistencies between radar data and official theory.

Flight 447 Air France
In 2009, Air France Flight 447 inexplicably crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing 228 people. There was no distress call, and no one knew the plane had crashed until several hours had passed when the pilots made their scheduled contact with air traffic control. A plane on autopilot was supposed to be considered as safe as possible, and it seemed incomprehensible for him to just disappear. It was incredibly difficult to find the cause of the disaster - the wreckage was at the bottom of the ocean. The investigation seemed hopeless when the black boxes were not found after 30 days, their beacons stopped beeping. However, the French authorities continued to search. In 2011, a private team was hired to work and they found the boxes within a week, along with the remains of over 100 bodies. The aircraft was determined to have crashed due to pilot error after the autopilot failed. Although the big mystery has finally been solved, many are still wondering how experienced pilots (there were three on board) lost control of the plane in a perfectly manageable situation.

Flight 7 Pan American
On November 8, 1957, Pan Am Flight 7 was just beginning a luxurious round-the-world trip when it crashed into Pacific Ocean killing 44 people. The wreck was found a week later when a US Navy aircraft carrier found bodies floating northeast of Honolulu. Authorities were unable to pinpoint the cause of the accident, but there are a few curious facts about the crash. First, no distress signals were sent, and toxicology reports showed that some of the passengers had high levels of carbon monoxide. More than 50 years later, people are still looking for answers. Some current theories cover revenge from an angry crew member, insurance fraud, and engine failure.