American authorities are investigating whether a Boeing 727 shattered in a deadly Christmas Day crash off West Africa was the same jet that vanished in Angola, setting off a worldwide search, the US State Department said on Friday.
Also Friday, a Canadian humanitarian-flight pilot said he saw a 727 with the missing Angola jet's tail number at Guinea's airport in June, the month after the Angola jet's disappearance.
PHOTO: AP
The plane's old tail number had been incompletely, and unsuccessfully, covered over, and the plane reregistered in Guinea, and flown by Lebanese-owned Union des Transports Africains (UTA), pilot Bob Strothers said.
"We saw it on the ramp," Strothers said, speaking by telephone from the Guinea capital, Conakry. "A new registration had been painted on the aluminum part, and underneath ... you could see the old registration number, which matches the plane that went missing."
The 727 that crashed off Benin on Christmas Day, killing at least 130 of the 161 people aboard, also was Guinean-registered, and also operated by UTA. Strothers first came forward with his claim before the Christmas Day crash.
The developments heightened the mystery of the missing Angola 727, which took off from an airport in Luanda, Angola, on May 25, and disappeared.
The US has led an international hunt for the Angola 727, using satellite surveillance to check airstrips around the world, for fear that terrorists might have taken the Angola plane for a 9/11-style attack.
Lebanese news media on Friday suggested the two planes were the same.
In Lebanon on Friday, however, aviation officials and others knowledgeable about the country's aviation industry discounted the idea, saying that the plane that crashed off Benin appeared much older than the one that had gone missing from Angola.
UTA officials could not be reached for comment on Friday.
UTA offices in Guinea and in Lebanon have been deserted since the Christmas Day crash, with police surrounding the office in Guinea.
The Christmas Day crash killed the wife and son of the airline's owner, who was also aboard but survived. The owner and the plane's Libyan pilot quickly left hospitals, and have not been publicly accounted for since.
In Washington, US State Department spokesman Lou Fintor said: "We're aware of the reports. We're checking into them."
Aviation officials in Angola said they would withhold comment pending more information.
In Guinea, transport officials said they had investigated whether the planes were the same, and found it false. "He was mistaken," senior aviation deputy Dominique Mara said of Strothers.
"This wasn't the plane from Luanda. The Transport Ministry has denied this claim," Mara said.
Guinea Transport Minister Cellou Dallein Diallo told reporters in Conakry that UTA had taken out insurance on the Boeing on June 27, which was a month after the Angola jet's disappearance. It was not clear Friday when UTA had started flying the 727 registered to it.
US officials have refused detailed comment on the search for the Angola plane, saying only that all efforts were being expended to find the jet.
The FBI also has put out a worldwide alert for American Ben Charles Padilla, who allegedly was seen boarding the Angola 727 with another man just before it disappeared.
According to Padilla's family in Florida, he was hired to repossess the jet after Air Angola failed to make lease payments.
His sister, Benita Padilla-Kirkland, said in June that she feared the plane had crashed or that Padilla, 51, was being held against his will.
US officials have cited a possible business dispute as a reason for the disappearance of the Angola jet, as well as their concerns about possible theft by terrorists.
The Angola plane bore the tail number N844AA when it disappeared.
That was the number Strothers, the Canadian pilot, said he saw, incompletely obscured, on the jet at the airport in Guinea in June.
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