Disappearance of Ben Padilla

In 2003 a man named Ben Padilla and a mechanic climbed into a Boeing 727 that was collecting dust at an Angolan airport, taxied silently to the runway, and took off. No trace of the plane or the men has ever been found. The plane, formerly owned by American Airlines, had been converted into a diesel fuel transport to sell fuel to mining companies, but the whole business deal sounds rather shady, and most of the mechanics who came over from the U.S. to work on the job went home without being paid, except for Ben Charles Padilla.

A 727 requires a crew of three to fly it, and neither Padilla nor the other mechanic were accomplished pilots, so initial theories speculated that there was a hijacker aboard who forced Padilla to take off with the plane. No airport reported a mystery 727 in a dinged-up American Airlines livery landing on one of their runways. Odder still, no signs of a crash was reported anywhere over the Atlantic Ocean, or anyplace in the dense jungles of southern Africa, although it has been suggested that the FBI investigation into the disappearance turned something up that they aren't letting the public know.

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