Os Maiores Mistérios da aviação Mundial. (Teste seu ICAO)

Lost aircraft, never found passengers and even a nuclear bomber that went missing ‒ that is not a piece of a horror movie plot, it’s a part of the world’s most horrifying mysteries in aviation. Mysteries existed all the time and aviation is not an exception. The past of aviation holds numerous unsolved stories that left us many unanswered questions. Here is a list of 5 world’s biggest mysteries in the history of aviation.

Do Pilots avoid the Devil’s Triangle?

Ghosts, strange aircraft disappearances, and even signs of an alien? The Bermuda Triangle can be the right definition for the unsolved stories in the history of aviation. The Bermuda Triangle, sometimes called the Devil’s Triangle, is located between Miami, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda. Even though this triangle holds plenty of strange stories, the most mysterious one happened when a U.S. Navy bomber, Flight 19, disappeared with 14 people in a mentioned area, on December 5, 1945. Later the same day, BuNo 59225 was sent to search for a missing Flight 19. The second aircraft with 13 people got lost in an area of the Bermuda Triangle and never came back.

D. B. Cooper, the mysterious hijacker of the sky

In 1971, D. B. Cooper as well known as Dan Cooper left a frightful mark in the history of aviation. During the commercial flight from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington D.C., D. B. Cooper hijacked a Boeing 727. He not only managed to get $200,000 ransom money, release all the passengers but also ordered the pilot to fly low over Mexico and parachuted out of the aircraft. Police and FBI investigators never identified D. B. Cooper. After this incident, in 1972, the Federal Aviation Administration made an order to install “Cooper vanes” in all Boeing 727. A mechanical wedge named “Cooper vanes” disables aircraft doors and prevents the ventral airstair of an aircraft from being lowered in flight.

EgyptAir Flight 990

It is still a mystery what happened during the EgyptAir Flight 990 from Los Angeles to Cairo, in 1999. Boeing 767-366ER successfully took off around 1:20 AM EST. After around 30 minutes, air traffic controllers received signals that the aircraft leveled at its assigned altitude of 10,000 meters. Aircraft reached the dangerous speed limit and flew in a lower direction. Just in minutes, the whole aircraft broke apart in the sky at 3,000 meters and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. All 217 people died, including passengers and crew. Before the accident, the Flight 990 officer who controlled the plane, was repeatedly saying “I rely on God”. It is still unsolved whether Flight 990 was the suicidal tragedy or the plot of terrorist action?

The unexplained nightmare of Helios Airways Flight 522

In 2005, a flight of Boeing 737 from Cyprus to Prague became the deadliest flight in the aviation of Greece. The passenger jet went slightly off course and air traffic controllers in Greece tried to contact the crew of the flight. After 19 attempts to contact the Boeing 727, two F-16s flew by the passenger jet and tried to intercept it. The pilots of F-16s noticed that the captain’s chair was empty, a copilot lied down unmoving and oxygen masks were hanging from the ceiling. All passengers and crew on board were dead. Helios Airways Flight 522 flew on autopilot until it ran out of fuel and crashed into a hillside in Greece. Investigators could not explain the mystery of how cabin pressure got so low in the passenger jet.

The mysterious loss of Airbus A330-200

In 2009, Air France Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris disappeared in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The Airbus A330-200 went missing with 228 people, including passengers and crew. It took about a horrific six hours for Air France to concede that Flight 447 disappeared in the darkness. The mystery continues after the wreckage of the lost aircraft was discovered. Investigators found out that the Airbus A330-200 autopilot went down while flying through a thunderstorm. In 2012, investigators published the final report of Air France Flight 447, explaining that the tragedy was caused due to ice crystals that got into pitot tubes and disabled the autopilot of the aircraft. After many years, it is still a question of how the state-of-the-art Airbus A330-200 did not show any signals before it disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean.