John Mutantu

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

## Background

### Background of John Mutantu

John was a hired mechanic from the Republic of Congo. Unlike Ben Padilla, the other man who went missing on the Boeing 727, there are very few details available about his life. There are no photographs of John available online.

### Background of the Boeing 727

The missing Boeing 727, registered as tail number N844AA, was manufactured in 1975 and operated by American Airlines as a passenger aircraft for 25 years. It was then purchased by Maury Joseph, the president of Aerospace Sales & Leasing, a Miami based company. He leased out the plane out to Keith Irwin, a South African entrepreneur, who stripped out the passenger seats and had the plane outfitted to carry diesel fuel. Irwin had a contract which 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 the 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 though as authorities discovered that it did not have a high frequency radio which it was required to carry and lacked 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, and Irwin was having difficulties with his partners who were claiming to have ownership of the Boeing 727 despite Joseph not having received full payment yet. Then in April 2003, Irwin left Angola, abandoning the aircraft after someone allegedly attempted to break into his hotel room for unknown reasons.

At the time of the Boeing 727’s disappearance, Joseph was in the process of transferring the ownership of the plane 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 aircraft mechanic, Ben Padilla, to service the plane 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 plane, but he also arranged to have the plane taken down the runway the day before to 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

John was working on a Boeing 727 aircraft along with a flight mechanic, Ben Padilla, in 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, and failed to initiate any communication to the control tower to explain what was happening. Rattled, air traffic control tower officers attempted to make contact with the aircraft, concerned as the plane's movements were “erratic”. After reaching the runway threshold, the plane began its takeoff roll with the aircraft lights and transponder switched off before beginning to head northwest in the direction of Berkina Faso. At this point, the aircraft was considered stolen by airport authorities. The crew's last radio contact was their request for obtaining landing permission in the Seychelles, an island which was actually located in the opposite direction (due west). In that case, to be able to speak to Seychelles air traffic controllers, they had to have been in the vicinity of the airport It is unclear who exactly was speaking over the radio, although it never landed.

The Boeing 727 was supposed to be manned by a three-person crew and neither of the two men known to be aboard were qualified to fly passenger aircraft, however they apparently had enough knowledge of aircraft systems and tuning in to radio communications with airports in order to be able to follow procedures and preparations to get the flight off the ground and take off successfully in the first place, and were able to toggle the transponder and exterior lighting systems.

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 in the event that this was to occur, he would rather deliberately crash the plane than comply with what he was being ordered to do. Ben’s sister similarly believes that he was probably the one flying the aircraft, and believed it had most likely either crashed somewhere in Africa or surrounding waters, perhaps also as a result of fuel starvation considering the distance flown at least between their airport of departure and the Seychelles--aircraft usually only take off with a little more than the amount of fuel needed for its scheduled journey (in case the aircraft is put into a hold, or is forced to divert to another airport nearby)--or that the crew members, including Mutantu, were being held somewhere against their will.

Maury Joseph, the owner of the Boeing 727 had previous convictions for forging 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 the plane was hijacked by terrorists.

The FBI officially closed their investigation into the disappearance of the Boeing 727 and the men onboard in 2005.

## Sources

* John Mutantu on Wikipedia
* *Africa Global News*
* *Simple Flying*