# Are there any unfound missing planes on land **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 17, 2015, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703 "2015-12-17T16:08:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/21 "2015-12-18T00:22:23Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > My guess is that STENDEC was a commercial cablegram code, but if no one has figured that by now, I must be wrong. ☹ No it appears to mean “santiago, descending” as they were preparing to land, and telling the airport that they will soon be occupying some land down there, or well, they hoped to be doing so. This wasn’t known and hence STENDEC wasn’t clearly understood… , the plane had just disappeared… The morse code was garbled probably because the radio operator was more interested in trying to assist the pilot in flying the plane safely and navigating to Santiago … The pilot would have been onto him all trip, asking him if he could assist in navigation or at least the likely altitude of terrain below them. The skilled radio guy may have had better things to do than inform an airport the airport had two minutes to clear the runway, a useless statement as it really was not going to have significant change in the risks of death and destruction … that procedure was probably passed off to someone else who garbled the morse. OR the radio guy may have been in quite a panic, the radio operator may well be more of an intellectual than a soldier… less able to cope with the fear… so he may have been simply out of action… So its entirely possible the morse was sent by someone who was garbling the letters. ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/22 "2015-12-18T00:49:34Z")
> [@White SIFL](#): > > I was reading over a list of missing aircraft the other day. It was quite fascinating as it included some pretty large planes. However, all of them had been presumed lost at sea. OP’s mistake is highlighted in his first paragraph… The list was OF large planes that are missing. Boing 707 and larger, the 60 seaters and larger… They are ALWAYS found, unless lost at sea. There are many many Cessna and other 5 ,6 seaters flown for recreation or personal transport, that are missing over land. Its not always the case they are missing in impossible to search areas or while out of radio contact with ground. The one missing in the Hunter Valley area of NSW… the problem is that it was flying into heavy rain and it then flew into an area with many rivers… Searches have been conducts in the most thick and steep areas of the mountains, but … its not there. Not a single trace has been found. What remains are the pools in the river, the lakes and the seas… Evidence ? A few (or six ?) months ago, a river’s pool was searched and two cars were found, with skeletons inside, the skeletons were of young people who had crashed off the road into the river decades ago, in separate incidents. (perhaps the road safety had been improved since then, but it had the trap for a young driver at night…) So too these missing planes may have crashed near or into a river or lake, and now may be permanently under water , thus much harder to find. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/23 "2015-12-18T02:42:24Z")
I used to fly these [Piper PA-31 Navajo - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_PA-31_Navajo#/media/File:G-STHA-Navajo.jpg) through the Grand Canyon doing air tours. We carried one pilot plus nine passengers, so definitely a smallish aircraft. About 4,000 lbs empty and about 35 feet in width & length. A few years previously another pilot for another company had flown an identical airplane into the side of a butte shrouded in clouds. The impact site was your classic Arizona terrain: all red and yellow sandstone with no plants or trees to obscure the view of the ground. The wreckage settled on a small sloping ledge about halfway down on the side of the butte. It was impractical to recover, so after a brief investigation it was left there to bake in the sun. We called the place “Dead Fred Butte”. You can probably guess why. We flew over the site every single day. Just a couple thousand feet above the ground, so ~1/2 mile away. We knew exactly where it was, and exactly what shape to look for. I spotted it about 1 time out of 5. The rest of the time the mottled hunks of sunbaked aluminum looked just like the mottled hunks of sunbaked rock. The damn thing was almost invisible, hiding there in plain sight. Bottom line: If wreckage is that hard to spot in a fully known location 100% free of mud, trees, haze, clouds, etc., imagine how hard it is to spot fresh wreckage during a no-kidding search. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/24 "2015-12-18T03:00:29Z")
LSL, was the pilot’s body recovered? And did any of your passengers spot it? As for “STENDEC”, I remembered the code word and knew that it was in South America but couldn’t recall exactly when or where. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/25 "2015-12-18T21:47:21Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > LSL, was the pilot’s body recovered? > > And did any of your passengers spot it? > > As for “STENDEC”, I remembered the code word and knew that it was in South America but couldn’t recall exactly when or where. The mishap occurred a few years before I worked there. So I got all these stories at least second hand. They recovered a few chunks of the pilot & passengers. They always want a piece of meat from the crew for drug/alcohol checks. The aircraft hit a vertical cliff face going about 150 mph, so not much was left intact. When newspapers talk about coroners “identifying bodies” after crashes like that, that’s often pretty euphemistic compared to the actual “Let’s play multi-human jigsaw with 80% of the pieces gone.” Many of these closed-coffin funerals are burying just a couple pounds of flesh & bone. Our route took us right over the top, so folks looking out the side really didn’t have a vantage point to see it. That was not by coincidence. We flew with a passenger in the co-pilot seat. They at least had line of sight looking out the windshield as we approached the site. But it disappeared under the nose far enough away that \*I \*never had anyone see it in my few months in the Canyon. I can’t say that nobody ever saw it on any tourist flight; a lot of tourists fly through there every day. By the time I was doing this, it sure didn’t look like an intact airplane. There was an engine and nacelle attached to a bit of wing, and most of the tail maybe 20 feet away with a couple feet of utterly crushed fuselage structure attached. It sorta looked like an oversized stubbed-out cigarette. These pieces were still not much bigger than a home refrigerator. After that it was just a litter of confetti. That looked a lot like the native rocks. The accident would have been around 1984. I have no idea how the wreckage has deteriorated since. When I get home and have my big monitor I might Google Earth to see if I can locate it. If I do I’ll post a link. ---
**Author:** ![Gray\_Ghost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c0e974/32.png) [@Gray\_Ghost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gray_Ghost)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/26 "2015-12-18T22:23:47Z")
Reading **LSLGuy** ’s account of his co-worker’s mishap, and idly looking for the butte myself in Google Earth, I just wanted to share that GE Street View works in the very bottom of the canyon. Guess they shot the imagery with a Google Street camera attached to an inflatable raft. It looks great. FWIW. As far as seeing wreckage in GE, I helped with the crowdsourced attempt to find Steve Fossett’s missing airplane by staring at various aerial photographs and flagging anything that looked airplane-like. It was a lot harder than I would have guessed before I started. It’s not surprising to me that so many a/c are missing on land, even with the imagery databases we have these days. Another in the long missing a/c on land, that wasn’t found until fifteen years later, was the _Twilight Zone_ mentioned, [Lady Be Good](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Be_Good_(aircraft)) ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/27 "2015-12-19T00:39:00Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > The accident would have been around 1984. I have no idea how the wreckage has deteriorated since. When I get home and have my big monitor I might Google Earth to see if I can locate it. If I do I’ll post a link. Google revealed a bunch of links to a 1986 crash. Might that have been it? ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/28 "2015-12-19T00:44:36Z")
That’s about the right era. I worked there in 1989 and all I recall is the accident was “a few years ago”. Post a link or two and I’ll take a peek when I get to a real computer. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/29 "2015-12-19T00:50:07Z")
> [@Gray\_Ghost](#): > > … > > Another in the long missing a/c on land, that wasn’t found until fifteen years later, was the _Twilight Zone_ mentioned, [Lady Be Good](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Be_Good_(aircraft)) See post #11 for a different article on that B-24. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/30 "2015-12-19T00:52:17Z")
It was a mid-air collision with a helicopter, and 25 fatalities with no survivors. ☹ > **[1986 Grand Canyon mid-air collision](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canyon_Airlines_Flight_6)** > > The Grand Canyon mid-air collision occurred when Grand Canyon Airlines Flight 6, a de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter, collided with a Bell 206 helicopter, Helitech Flight 2, over Grand Canyon National Park on June 18, 1986. All 25 passengers and crew on board the two aircraft were killed. It remains the deadliest accident involving a helicopter on United States soil, surpassing the crash of Los Angeles Airways Flight 841 in 1968, which killed 23 people. > On the morning of the accident Grand Ca... After you posted the date, that really narrowed things down. Most of the links when I Googled “Grand Canyon plane crash” were for a mid-air collision between two commercial airliners in 1956. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/31 "2015-12-19T01:04:32Z")
The canyon has claimed a lot of aircraft over the years. After GCA 6 the FAA jumped in with both feet and hyper-regulated all aspects of canyon ops. Including barring all ordinary civilian traffic. Just to be clear, GCA 6 is not Dead Fred. A comprehensive list of canyon accidents doesn’t exist AFAIK. It’d be long, going back into the 1930s. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/32 "2015-12-19T03:38:35Z")
If you throw in WWII military aircraft, I’m sure there are thousands missing all over the world. Particularly in Pacific jungle terrain. ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/33 "2015-12-19T04:05:53Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > The canyon has claimed a lot of aircraft over the years. After GCA 6 the FAA jumped in with both feet and hyper-regulated all aspects of canyon ops. Including barring all ordinary civilian traffic. > > … No kidding: see [FAA Flight Rules](https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/arc/programs/grand_canyon_overflights/documentation/SFRA_trail.pdf) for Grand Canyon. That hole in the ground has been a sore point for FAA going back to the airline collision which ended the ‘See and Be Seen’ rule of flight control. The current system of a controller dictating where/when/who can go was the result of that crash. One pilot deviated from his assigned altitude to ‘give his passengers a better view’ of the canyon. They got a real good view. And ‘See and Be Seen’ died with them. ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/34 "2015-12-19T04:26:24Z")
1983 is the only PA-31 in the NTSB Aviation Accident database for "01/01/1980 - 12/31/1989, AZ, Fatal, Piper: [http://www.ntsb.gov/\_layouts/ntsb.aviation/brief.aspx?ev\_id=20001214X44099&key=1&queryId=7e544d4e-7ef8-4ecf-bdda-96dacc394daa&pgno=1&pgsize=20](http://www.ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb.aviation/brief.aspx?ev_id=20001214X44099&key=1&queryId=7e544d4e-7ef8-4ecf-bdda-96dacc394daa&pgno=1&pgsize=20) Trying to control for ‘Grand Canyon’ is difficult - the location is where the aircraft landed - unless the narrative happens to mention ‘grand canyon’ (let alone every way it might be abbreviated), you pretty much have to look at all of AZ _AND_ NV (point of origin for many tours) ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/35 "2015-12-19T05:36:53Z")
> [@usedtobe](#): > > 1983 is the only PA-31 in the NTSB Aviation Accident database for "01/01/1980 - 12/31/1989, AZ, Fatal, Piper: > > [CAROL](http://www.ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb.aviation/brief.aspx?ev_id=20001214X44099&key=1&queryId=7e544d4e-7ef8-4ecf-bdda-96dacc394daa&pgno=1&pgsize=20) > > Trying to control for ‘Grand Canyon’ is difficult - the location is where the aircraft landed - unless the narrative happens to mention ‘grand canyon’ (let alone every way it might be abbreviated), you pretty much have to look at all of AZ _AND_ NV (point of origin for many tours) This one sounds like it might be it. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/36 "2015-12-19T13:59:31Z")
That almost got to be it. Without the rest of the narrative, which NTSB doesn’t have online, we can’t be 100% sure. But I’d put money on this being the one. Congrats on the excellent sleuthing. ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/37 "2015-12-19T15:41:13Z")
> [@usedtobe](#): > > No kidding: > > see [FAA Flight Rules](https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/arc/programs/grand_canyon_overflights/documentation/SFRA_trail.pdf) > > for Grand Canyon. > > That hole in the ground has been a sore point for FAA going back to the airline collision which ended the ‘See and Be Seen’ rule of flight control. > The current system of a controller dictating where/when/who can go was the result of that crash. > One pilot deviated from his assigned altitude to ‘give his passengers a better view’ of the canyon. > They got a real good view. > > And ‘See and Be Seen’ died with them. Nitpick - the deviation in altitude was for clearing weather - to 1000 on top, not the view. Sightseeing? No. It was quite common then for air crews to point out anything of interest to the passengers that they might see. It wasn’t reckless or dangerous, all things considered. Remember, in 1956 seeing 2 airliners in flight at the same time was a rare occurrence unless you lived near an airport. Today, not so. The DC-7 did see the other, it was just too late to avoid the collision. Neither pilot was careless of inept for 1956. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/38 "2015-12-19T16:28:43Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Well, [this one](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_New_Hampshire_Learjet_crash) in New Hampshire wasn’t found for three years. It can be surprisingly hard to find an aircraft that doesn’t have an electronic location transmitter. That is a good example because it happened in the Northeastern U.S. not that long ago, there was some reasonable data about where it could have crashed and the plane involved, a LearJet, wasn’t that small. I lived in the general area at the time and the search for it was massive involving thousands of volunteers over many months and years. It was only found by chance by a forester 3 years later. New Hampshire has many remote areas but the area where it crashed isn’t THAT remote. There are thousands of people that live in the general area and not one of them saw or heard it crash. It doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you know that it happened on Christmas Eve during really foggy and rainy conditions. Everyone was inside celebrating the holidays and any loud sounds would be attributed to fireworks or other festivities by anyone that happened to hear them. The woods where it crashed are unusually deep and dense as has few commonly used trails. However, one of the biggest factors is seeing what happens to a LearJet when it crashes at full speed into terrain. There is amazing little left and it becomes more of a scattered trash pile than anything that resembles what was once a multi-million dollar aircraft. [Check out the photo in this article to see what it looked like](http://thecabin.net/stories/111499/wor_1114990160.html#.VnWD-hUrKhd). Keep in mind that the area has already been cleared of vegetation so that investigators can scour it. Before that, anyone could pass within yards of it and either not see it at all or not realize it is the remains of what was once a fairly large aircraft. If it wasn’t for a that chance encounter, it might still be missing today. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/39 "2015-12-19T18:41:38Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > If you throw in WWII military aircraft, I’m sure there are thousands missing all over the world. Particularly in Pacific jungle terrain. One was found just a few years ago, and some of the bones were identified and returned to the States for burial. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703/40 "2015-12-19T19:11:04Z")
> [@GreasyJack](#): > > [Here’s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950_Douglas_C-54D_disappearance) another notable one: an Air Force transport plane that disappeared with 44 people on it _somewhere_ between the Yukon and Montana in 1950 and never found. That search was called off because a few weeks later the search planes were needed to find a [huge bomber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950_British_Columbia_B-36_crash) that crashed in BC that was only found years later. “On 14 February 1950, a Convair B-36B, Air Force Serial Number 44-92075 assigned to the 7th Bomb Wing at Carswell Air Force Base, crashed in northern British Columbia after jettisoning a _ **Mark 4 nuclear bomb** _. This was the first such nuclear weapon loss in history. The B-36 had been en route from Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks, Alaska to Carswell AFB in Fort Worth, Texas, more than 3000 miles south-east, on a mission that included a _ **simulated nuclear attack** _ on San Francisco.” Yeah, “simulated.” With a real A-bomb. :eek: 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-unfound-missing-planes-on-land/740703.md?page=3)