Missing: Planes That Vanished Mid-Flight

Summary

This Why Files campfire-style episode explores three aviation mysteries in which flights ended in tragedy or vanished without a trace. It covers the 1972 crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 in the Everglades, reportedly followed by ghost sightings of its dead crew on other planes, the 1953 disappearance of an Air Force interceptor chasing an unknown radar target over Lake Superior, and the 1978 vanishing of pilot Frederick Valentich after he reported a strange craft circling his plane. Each case left behind witnesses, records, and questions that authorities never fully answered.

Key takeaways

• 1A brand-new Eastern Air Lines jet crashed in the Florida Everglades in 1972, reportedly because the crew was distracted by a burned-out landing gear indicator lightbulb.
• 2After the crash, crews on another plane reportedly saw familiar faces, apparently the dead crew, in first class and the galley.
• 3About two decades earlier, an Air Force fighter chased an unknown radar target over Lake Superior during a snowstorm, and controllers watched the two radar blips merge.
• 4What happened to the Lake Superior fighter after the blips merged has never been explained.
• 5In 1978, pilot Frederick Valentich radioed Melbourne air traffic control about a strange craft circling his plane over Bass Strait.
• 6About six minutes after Valentich's report, radio contact was lost.

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