Forgotten Boeing 737 discovered 13 years after it vanished without a trace
A Boeing 737-200 that went missing without a trace was finally located over a decade later.
Incredibly, the enormous Indian Airlines plane - that is roughly 100-foot long - vanished from Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport (NSCBIA), in Kolkata, India, without any passengers on board.
Air India has conceded to having misplaced the huge chunk of metal back in 2012 - and it took 13 years before the 37-foot-tall aircraft, which has a wingspan of a 93-foot, was discovered.
Yes, it sounds like something straight out of Lost (you know, that series about survivors of a plane crash - which ironically, after its first two legendary seasons became somewhat of a plane crash itself), but unfortunately for the airline, it's very much real.
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While I'm not well-versed in airfield operations, surely the firm was aware that the pilot left it at Kolkata's airport... unless Air India assumed Santa had borrowed it to give Rudolph and the gang some well-deserved time off.
Anyway, those in airport control were apparently aware of its whereabouts as Air India reportedly received a request for the jet to be removed from the premises... along with an eye-watering parking bill in the region of $115,000.
If you're thinking, 'airport's are huge it could have been anywhere'... we're not talking about Illinois' Chicago O’Hare International (ORD) - which boasts the most runways on the planet with a staggering eight... Kolkata has just two.
Mind you, it's still a beast of an airport!
Okay, now if the sheer size of the vehicle isn't enough to make you think, 'how on Earth has this thing gone missing'... it would have cost roughly north of $1 million.
The plane was registered to Indian Airlines, which Air India merged with back in 2007, but the aircraft itself was rented to the Indian postal service to be used as a cargo plane.
The firm's CEO, Campbell Wilson, explained that the vehicle had been decommissioned during this process and was somehow omitted from official documents.
Since its discovery, Air India has sold the plane - although rather sadly it will no longer be used in flight, but instead could be used for fire training.
According to local reports, Bengaluru Airport completed the sale and transfer of the aircraft, with the intention of using it to train maintenance, repair, and overhaul engineers, and it was seen being loaded onto a tractor trailer to embark on its 1,174-mile journey - which to put that into perspective, is roughly the same distance as the crow flies between New York City and Miami.
Joe Yates