Ben Padilla

**Ben Charles Padilla Jr.** was a man who vanished when the plane he was servicing took off from an airport in Angola in 2003. It is unclear what happened to Ben, the plane and John Mutantu, another employee on board at the time.

## Background

Ben was a U.S. citizen from Pensacola, Florida. He worked as an aircraft mechanic for the firm Air Gemini and had been in Angola for two months at the time of his disappearance. He had no criminal history.

The missing Boeing 727, registered as N844AA, was manufactured in 1975 and operated for American Airlines as a passenger aircraft for 25 years. Maury Joseph, the president of Aerospace Sales & Leasing, a Miami-based company, then purchased it. He leased out the plane to Keith Irwin, a South African entrepreneur, who stripped out the passenger seats and had the aircraft outfitted to carry diesel fuel. Irwin had a contract that allowed him to supply fuel to diamond mines in Angola. Because Angola had faced decades of civil war, most of the roads were damaged, so this was the only way to supply fuel to these mines, and Irwin amassed a six-person crew to do so. However, this venture failed.

The Boeing 727 left America on February 28, 2002, and the crew arrived in Luanda, Angola, on March 14. The plane was not allowed to fly through as authorities discovered that it needed a high-frequency radio, which it was required to carry, and needed the proper paperwork to fly over Angola. By the time the Angolan civil war ended, the crew had left, many unhappy with the conditions they had been forced to work in. Irwin had difficulties with his partners claiming ownership of the Boeing 727 despite Joseph still waiting to receive full payment. Then, in April 2003, Irwin left Angola, abandoning the aircraft, after someone attempted to break into his hotel room for unknown reasons.

At the time of the Boeing 727’s disappearance, Joseph was transferring the plane's ownership to IRS Airlines. The company was a short-lived Nigerian airline and had no affiliation with the United States government despite its name. However, the plane had been in the Quatro Fevereiro Airport in Luanda, Angola, for fourteen months and had accrued $4 million in unpaid airport fees, so Joseph called in Ben to service the plane, supervise the team of mechanics working on it and find a pilot and co-pilot to fly it to South Africa after it was given clearance to do so.

Two weeks before the plane went missing, Joseph visited the airport to see how the situation was progressing. Ben had found two pilots who worked for Air Gemini to fly the aircraft, but he also arranged to have the plane taken down the runway the day before it took off to check all systems were running well. Joseph gave Ben $43,000 to pay holding fees to the airport. Ben did so and later faxed him the receipt.

## Case

Ben was working on a Boeing 272 along with John Mutantu at Quatro Fevereiro Airport in Luanda, Angola, on May 25, 2003. Sometime between 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. that evening, around sunset, the plane began taxiing without clearance to do so or making any communication to the control tower to explain what was happening. The tower officers attempted to communicate with the aircraft as it moved “erratically” and entered the runway but got no response. The plane then took off with the lights and transponder switched off and began flying toward Burkina Faso. Its last radio contact was to ask for landing permission in the Seychelles; it is unclear who was speaking over the radio, although it never landed.

While Ben was a licensed aircraft mechanic, flight engineer and pilot, he was not licensed to fly a Boeing 727 and had never flown a plane that large in the past. John was not qualified to fly the aircraft either. Furthermore, three people were required to fly the Boeing, and only two were known to be onboard.

Ben’s brother believes that he would not have flown away willingly. Ben had expressed to him that he was worried about the prospect of the plane being hijacked by terrorists and said that if this was to occur, he would instead deliberately crash the plane rather than comply with what he was being ordered to do. Ben’s sister similarly believes that he was probably the one flying the airport and most likely either crashed it somewhere in Africa or is being held somewhere against his will.

Maury Joseph, the owner of the Boeing 727, had previous convictions for foraging documents and defrauding the investors of another company he ran by inflating the profits. American authorities believe that the plane was stolen as part of a financial scam by Joseph. Joseph disagrees with this and believes terrorists hijacked the plane.

The FBI closed their investigation into the disappearance of the Boeing 727 and the men onboard in 2005. Ben is now believed to be deceased.

## Description of Airplane

The missing plane was a Boeing 200 series 727 airplane with a tail number of N844AA and a serial number 20985. It had an unpainted silver body and blue, white, and red stripes.

At the time of its disappearance, the aircraft was filled with 53,000 liters of fuel, giving it a range of about 2,400 kilometers. No debris from the plane had ever been found despite extensive searching. There was a possible sighting of the Boeing 727 in July 2003 in Conakry, Guinea, but this has since been ruled out.

## Characteristics

* Brown hair.
* Brown eyes.
* Light Skin.

## Sources

* Ben Padilla at the *Charley Project*
* Ben Padilla on Wikipedia
* *Africa Global News*
* *Simple Flying*