5 Mysterious Cases Of Aircraft That Disappeared Without A Trace

When putting this article together I came across a comment posted by a veteran pilot who speaks a lot of sense, here’s the voice of experience:

As a private pilot, who has flown for over 15 years (now retired due to old age) I can only say this about missing flights; Hundreds of aircraft have vanished without a trace since the days of the first Wright brother’s flight. The world is huge and the sky is very unpredictable and unforgiving. Flight on long distance trips seems to enter a strange place of suspension where nothing much seems to be happening. The horizon remains static, and you get the feeling you are trapped in some gigantic, invisible web. It is like trying to watch the hour hand of a clock move. Yet, you are moving at fantastic speeds compared to land travel and things can happen very quickly, often without the pilot even being aware of them.

Even the most sophisticated aircraft can fall victim to the smallest seemingly insignificant human error or machinery defect. Even with many years of experience, I myself have flown into areas that should have been very familiar to me and yet, for no reason at all, I became confused and thought myself hopelessly lost…even with two experienced pilots on that flight we could not get our bearings for almost half an hour…suddenly, we saw a landmark we both recognized and felt absolutely foolish…we were less than thirty miles from our home airport and just in an instant everything was familiar and recognizable. It was a very valuable lesson. I suddenly understood how people can get lost on familiar routes…but, imagine flying over the ocean with no land marks at all, or over land masses you have never flown over before? No pilot should ever feel smug about his own flying skills.