历史上几个未解的飞机失踪之谜

Eleven years ago, a shiny silver Boeing 727 airliner took off from Luanda, Angola, and became one of the few commercial jetliners to vanish and never be found.
11年前，一架亮银色波音(Boeing) 727客机从安哥拉首都罗安达起飞后失踪，之后始终没有被找到，这使其成为了史上为数不多的几架失踪商用喷气式飞机之一。

Massive jet airplanes disappear more often in fiction than in real life, but it does happen. In 1979, a Boeing 707 with six people aboard was lost in the Pacific Ocean after leaving Tokyo. And dozens of smaller planes have gone missing and never been located.
现实中，大型喷气式客机的失踪事件并非小说里那样多见，但也确有发生。1979年一架载有6人的波音707飞机从东京起飞后消失在太平洋上空。还有数十架小型飞机在失踪后杳无踪迹。

The so-far fruitless search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared early Saturday with 239 people aboard, is uNPRecedented because of the plane's size and because the widebody Boeing 777 had been in radio and satellite contact with multiple locations on the ground. It was also flying when it lost contact over the sea in one of the world's most densely populated regions, Southeast Asia, not over remote jungle or open ocean.
上周六早上，搭载有239人的马来西亚航空公司(Malaysia Airlines) MH370客机在起飞后失踪。而令人没有料到的是其搜寻工作迄今仍毫无进展。之所以这么说，是因为出事的波音777宽体客机体积庞大，在失踪之前与地面多个空管站保持着无线电和卫星联络；且失联时，客机正处于人口密集的东南亚的海域上空，而非某片偏远的热带雨林或大海上。

Planes have fallen, never to be seen again, from the earliest days of aviation. Others have been found only after lengthy searches or by chance decades later. Radar, satellites and other technology have become powerful aids in such situations.
在航空产业的发展初期就有过飞机失事后再未找到的案例。一些失事飞机在数十年后或因偶然、或经漫长的搜寻最终被找到，雷达、卫星等技术在其中起到了极大的帮助。

But as Flight 370's disappearance shows, technology still has limited reach in some swaths of the planet.
然而此次马航客机失踪事件凸显出这些技术在世界一些地区仍不完备。

'The fact is that, in many parts of the world . . . radar coverage is not complete,' said David McMillan, Chairman of the Flight Safety Foundation and former head of Eurocontrol, Europe's air-traffic coordinator. 'It's clearly an area for further improvement.'
欧洲航空安全组织(Eurocontrol)前主管、飞行安全基金会(Flight Safety Foundation)主席麦克米伦(David McMillan)说，实际上全球许多地区……的雷达覆盖都不完整，而该地区显然有待改善。

In the same region in 2007, it took crews 10 days to find the first pieces of an Indonesian Boeing 737 that crashed in the sea near Sulawesi. Searchers needed 36 hours to locate the first wreckage of Air France Flight 447, which crashed over the Atlantic five years ago with 228 people aboard.
2007年在这片地区，搜寻人员用了10天的时间才在苏拉威西(Sulawesi)附近海域找到了印尼波音737失事客机的首批残骸。五年前，载有228人的法国航空公司(Air France) 447航班在大西洋坠毁，搜寻队伍用了36个小时才首次找到客机残骸的位置。

'If a plane goes down in the ocean, it's very difficult to find it,' said Richard B. Stone, a former president of the International Society of Air Safety Investigators.
国际航空安全调查员协会(International Society of Air Safety Investigators)前主席斯通(Richard B. Stone)说，如果飞机坠入海洋，则其搜寻工作将十分困难。

The Aviation Safety Network, a database tracking accidents, lists 80 planes as 'missing' since 1948. No trace of the planes or their occupants was ever found, according to ASN President Harro Ranter. The aircraft range from tiny one-seat propeller planes to jetliners and a U.S. Coast Guard Lockheed C-130 Hercules -- a four-engine turboprop transport -- that crashed off the California coast in 2009.
追踪航空事故的数据库公司航空安全网络(Aviation Safety Network, ASN)列出了1948年以来的80架“失踪”飞机。据公司总裁Harro Ranter称，这些飞机的踪迹及机上人员都未曾被找到过。这其中既包括只有一个座位的螺旋桨飞机，也有2009年在加利福尼亚海岸附近坠毁的美国海岸警卫队(U.S. Coast Guard) C-130运输机。

The 727 that vanished over Angola is believed to have had only two people aboard. At dusk on May 25, 2003, an American mechanic for Aerospace Sales & Leasing Co., the Florida-based lessor that owned the 18-year-old plane, boarded the jetliner in Luanda, according to press reports at the time. He was accompanied by a Congolese assistant. Neither was certified to pilot the plane, which normally required a crew of three.
据信在安哥拉上空失踪的727飞机只载有两人。当时媒体报道称，2003年5月25日傍晚，佛罗里达租赁公司Aerospace Sales & Leasing Co.的一位美国机械师在罗安达登上了这架喷气式客机。该公司是这架机龄18年的飞机的所有者。伴他一起登机的还有一位刚果助理。这两人均无驾驶该飞机的资格，而该飞机执行飞行任务时一般要求须有三名机组人员。

Without authorization or communication, the plane began taxiing, according to press reports. Its lights and transponder remained off as it took off and started to fly over the Atlantic.
媒体报道称，在无授权也无通讯联络的情况下，这架飞机开始滑翔。在该飞机起飞并开始飞越大西洋时，其航行灯和雷达收发机仍处于关闭状态。

The unauthorized departure, less than two years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, sparked an international search. U.S. diplomats and African authorities visited airfields across the continent, seeking hints the plane had landed. U.S. national-security authorities including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency scoured satellite images. The plane was never seen again.
这次未授权的飞机离港事件距2001年9月11日的袭击还不到两年时间，国际社会对该飞机展开了搜索。美国外交人员和非洲国家政府部门查看了这块大陆上的机场，希望能找到727飞机落地的迹象。包括联邦调查局(Federal Bureau of Investigation，简称FBI)和中央情报局(Central Intelligence Agency，简称CIA)在内的美国国家安全部门还查找了卫星图像。但没有人再看见过这架飞机。

'I have no idea' about what happened to the 727, it is 'one of those things we've never understood,' said Maury Joseph, president of Aerospace Sales & Leasing. 'It's unheard of for something that large, and nothing to this day has ever shown up.'
Aerospace Sales & Leasing总裁约瑟夫(Maury Joseph)说，他对这架727发生了什么一无所知，这是他们一直没搞明白的事件之一。他说，这么大的一个物体凭空消失，至今再未露面，这真是前所未闻。

The FBI and CIA didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
FBI和CIA未立即回应置评请求。

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is one of the first jet planes since then to disappear for this long.
此事发生后，马航370航班是失踪了如此长时间的首批喷气式客机之一。

'The fact that it's so rare is the reason everyone is paying attention to it,' said Bob van der Linden, chairman of the aeronautics department at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
史密森尼国家航空航天博物馆(Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum)航空部门主席范德林登(Bob van der Linden)说，这样的事太罕见了，所以大家都十分关注。