At least 19 aircraft have gone missing in the 21st century, with the latest potential case involving a Bering Air Cessna 208 Caravan that disappeared on February 6. This incident is part of a broader pattern of primarily small aircraft vanishing in remote locations worldwide.
One notable disappearance occurred in May 2023 when a Boeing 727 vanished from an Angolan airport. Smithsonian Magazine reported that the aircraft, registered as N844AA, taxied onto the runway and departed Quatro de Fevereiro Luanda International Airport (LAD) with its transponder turned off, leaving no trace behind. American Airlines operated this Boeing 727 between May 1975 and August 2001 before it was briefly owned by IRS Airlines, a now-defunct Nigerian carrier, eventually ending up in Angola.
Other cases include an Antonov An-26 disappearing in Angola in 2000 and a British Aerospace 125 private jet operated by Senegalair going missing after a possible mid-air collision in 2015. The list of missing aircraft also features incidents involving various models such as Beechcraft King Airs, Piper PA-31s, and Embraer EMB 720s across different locations like Australia, Guyana, and Brazil.
The most high-profile disappearance involved Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. A Malaysian Ministry of Transport report from July 2018 concluded that “there is a significant lack of evidence available to the Team to determine with any certainty the reasons that the aircraft diverted from its filed flight plan route.” The change likely resulted from manual inputs; however, without examining wreckage or flight data recorders (FDR) and cockpit voice recorders (CVR), no plausible failure could be identified.
In response to these disappearances, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) held a Multidisciplinary Meeting on Global Flight Tracking to propose recommendations for faster global tracking. This led to initiatives like the Global Aeronautical Distress and Safety System (GADSS) concept of operations and Location of an Aircraft in Distress Recovery (LADSR). According to ICAO, LADSR enables airlines to share position information during distress situations with appropriate organizations.
On February 6th, Bering Air’s Cessna Caravan registered as N321BA disappeared while operating flight 8E445 from Unalakleet Airport (UNK) to Nome Airport (OME). Ten people were onboard when it went off radar about forty minutes after departure. While not officially deemed missing yet according to ICAO standards—requiring terminated searches without located wreckage—the US Coast Guard has initiated search efforts offshore where contact was lost.
