A Plane Disappeared and Landed 37 years later

Ladies and gentlemen, this is captain speaking.  Welcome aboard Flight 914!  Please fasten your seatbelts and observe the  no smoking sign— we will take off in 5 minutes.  When we’re at the cruising altitude, refreshments  will be served to you.  Our flight will take 37 years.  I wish you a pleasant trip.  What would you do if you went on a vacation  to another city and suddenly found yourself  in another country altogether?  I guess more adventurous types would even  enjoy such a change of plans, but most of  us would be confused.  Anyway, I bet even the most reckless of adventurers  would at least raise an eyebrow if told they’d  flown for close to half a century.  On July 2, 1955, Pan American Flight 914 made  its way from New York to Miami, Florida.  It was a fine sunny day, and 57 passengers  on board the plane were looking forward to  seeing the warm beaches and palm trees of  Florida.  The plane took off without trouble, but 3  hours later, when it should’ve already landed  at the destination airport, it was nowhere  to be seen.  Radars of the control tower in Miami didn’t  show any approaching aircraft, and no distress  signals were received either.  When air traffic control contacted the New  York tower, they got a perplexing reply: Flight  914 just disappeared from the radars in mid-air.  Everything indicated that the plane was lost:  apart from having vanished from the radars,  air traffic control couldn’t get through  to the pilots with the radio.  The DC-4 simply vanished in thin air, leaving  no trace of itself or any of the people on  board .  Investigation was started right away.  The flight route took the plane over a part  of the Atlantic Ocean, and it seemed that  the only explanation of its vanishing was  that It crashed somewhere along the way.  Rescue teams were deployed, the Coast Guard  was scanning the waters, but still no luck.  Not a single piece of the lost plane was to  be found.  Investigators could only shrug their shoulders  in dismay: 61 people (passengers plus the  crew) just blinked out of existence along  with a huge flying machine.  Eventually, although the case was never really  solved, there was an official statement that  the plane crashed, taking the lives of everyone  on board.  But despite numerous — and understandable  — questions from the grieving relatives,  no one could say what really happened to Flight  914.  Until 37 years later, at least…  Change of scenery.  It’s now September 9, 1992, and we’re  in Caracas, Venezuela.  It’s a perfectly normal day for Juan de  la Corte, air traffic controller at the Caracas  airport.  He turned up at work, made some coffee, and  took his seat, overlooking flights.  He was giving some minor comments on a flight  in progress when something weird happened.  Seemingly out of nowhere, a new dot appeared  on the radar.  It was as if an aircraft had just popped up  from nothingness, or as if it had been hiding  from the radar and now decided to show up.  Either way, it was a strange thing to see  near a civil airport, and de la Corte checked  the readings several times, thinking at first  that it was a mistake.  It wasn’t, though: the readings were correct,  and soon he and his colleagues were able to  see it with their own eyes.  In less than 10 minutes, the culprit showed  up in the field of vision.  At first it looked to the air traffic control  like an ordinary airplane, but as it got closer,  they could see that it was, in fact, very  old: a DC-4 McDonnell Douglas passenger aircraft,  still with propellers instead of modern turbines.  Such planes were still in use, but they’d  grown obsolete and mostly replaced by more  contemporary ones.  But that wasn’t even the beginning of weird.  The real confusion began when the pilot of  the mysterious aircraft contacted the tower  and asked in English, “Where are we?”  As the one in charge at the time, Juan de  la Corte replied they were closing in on the  Caracas airport and asked where the flight  was headed.  There was a pause on the other side, and then  the pilot answered, “We are Pan Am Flight  914 heading from New York to Miami, Florida,  with a crew of four and 57 passengers on board.”  This took the air control completely off guard.  What was a Pan Am flight doing 1,100 miles  away from its point of destination?  And how did it even get there?  De la Corte was quick to ask a few more questions  to the pilot, and what he heard next baffled  him.  The pilot said his flight was scheduled to  land at the Miami airport at 9.55 am on July  2, 1955.  Now it was time for the tower to fall into  silence.  Before asking anything else, not to make matters  worse, air control cleared the plane for landing.  De la Corte didn’t know what to make of  the pilot’s words — perhaps he thought  he went insane, but that was irrelevant since  there were people on board the mystery airplane.  He had to make sure they landed safely, and  decided he would ask questions when they did.  Ground units were immediately called to assist  the plane and the passengers, and it landed  without trouble.  Having relaxed a little bit, Juan finally  decided to ask something that bothered him.  “Do you know today is May 21, 1992?”  Another pause that ensued told him it was  a huge mistake to say that.  As the ground crew approached the airplane,  the pilot’s bewildered voice on the radio  said, “What are you talking about?”  When de la Corte heard that, he knew he would  have to order security guards to go to the  plane and escort the passengers and the crew.  However, as they were moving towards the aircraft,  the pilot did something nobody expected.  Juan heard the flight captain’s panicky  voice saying, “No!  Stay away!  We’re leaving now!”  And indeed, he started the engines again and,  without waiting for take-off clearance, taxied  the plane to the runway.  Juan tried to stop him over the radio, telling  him he was creating a dangerous situation,  but the pilot didn’t respond.  He simply drove to the runway, accelerated,  and took off.  For some time, the plane could be seen in  the air, soon it only appeared as a dot on  the radar, and then… it vanished again.  No words could describe the shock Juan de  la Corte and his colleagues at the air control  tower were in.  They’d just seen an old airplane appearing  out of nowhere, the pilot telling them he  was headed to Miami, and before they could  do anything, it flew away again, only to disappear  in thin air like it had been a collective  hallucination.  No trace was found of that plane ever again,  and to this day, no one can explain what happened  that morning in Caracas.  Sniff sniff.  Smell that.  Smells kinda fishy right?  I must say, though, that there’s much dispute  about the credibility of this event.  Back in 1985, a tabloid called Weekly World  News was the first to cover this story, and  yes, I’ve just said 1985 — seven years  before the most popular version appeared.  Later, the same newspaper retold the story  twice more, only with other details, and with  1992 set as the date of a time-traveling aircraft  appearing in the future.  The picture of Juan de la Corte, the air traffic  controller in Caracas, also differed from  the 1985 original.  So the story was largely announced fake, and  it became a sort of an urban legend.  However, the legend still lives, and many  sources retell it in their own way.  Some even go as far as to say that the passengers  of the plane eventually returned to their  homes, and strangely, none of them looked  a day older than 37 years prior, while everyone  they knew grew old at a humanly pace.  They say doctors examined the pilot, the crew,  and the passengers but couldn’t find anything  out of the ordinary — the people were healthy.  This part doesn’t look even remotely credible,  though, because no solid piece of evidence  can be found about 61 people returning from  a decades-long flight.  I mean c’mon, wouldn’t they have run out  of snacks?  One thing that keeps popping up on the Internet  and piquing the interest of paranormal enthusiasts  is a small pocket calendar that somehow was  left on the Caracas airport runway when the  notorious plane took off.  The thing about it is that it’s from 1955,  and it allegedly remains the only artifact  of that weird encounter.  There are still people who claim the calendar  is real, but once again, there’s no actual  proof of its existence.  Ah well, who knows, maybe it’s just a tall  tale, an urban legend indeed; or it could  be a huge conspiracy to hide the fact that  time travel is possible.  I guess we’ll never know.  Wink wink.  And what do you think?  Was Flight 914 really lost in time for 37  years, or is it all just a hoax?  Let me know down in the comments!  If you learned something new today, then  share it with a friend.  But – hey! – don’t fly away just yet!  We have many cool posts  for you to  check out.  

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