历史上几个未解的飞机失踪之谜

Disappearances used to be more common. Amelia Earhart was notable as one of the first female aviators to set distance records in the 1930s. But she remains in the public conscience today more because she disappeared in her Lockheed Electra near New Guinea while attempting to circumnavigate the globe.
失踪事件以前更为常见。埃尔哈特(Amelia Earhart)是在上世纪30年代创造飞行距离纪录的首批女飞行员之一，并且因此扬名。但她现在还为人们所记起的一个更大的原因是，她驾驶着洛克希德-伊莱克特拉(Lockheed Electra)飞机进行环球飞行时，在新几内亚附近失踪。

Today, radar can generally track aircraft large and small. But even in an age of global satellite navigation and the perception of world-wide surveillance, significant areas of Earth are untouched by radar or regular observation.
时至今日，无论飞行器大小，雷达通常都可对其进行追踪。但即使到了全球卫星导航和人们以为的监控遍布世界各地的时代，地球上仍有大片区域是雷达或常规观测无法监测到的。

Empty spots are shrinking. In the 1970s, the 'Bermuda Triangle' loomed in the American imagination after several military planes disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean region between Florida, Puerto Rico and Bermuda, and other planes and ships were said to have vanished there. Supernatural explanations were eventually debunked.
不过其实，人类未触及的空白区域正在不断缩小。上世纪70年代，几架军用飞机在佛罗里达、波多黎各和百慕大之间位于大西洋的那个地区失踪后，“百慕大三角区”便引起了美国人的丰富联想。据说其它飞机和船只也曾消失于这个三角区。种种超自然的解释最终被揭穿。

'The accident rate in the Bermuda Triangle is no better or worse than anywhere else, but it sounds really intriguing,' said the Smithsonian's Mr. van der Linden.
范德林登表示，百慕大三角区的事故率和其他地方基本相当，只不过相关事件听上去很神秘罢了。

Rational explanations haven't limited people's imaginations. The hugely successful TV series 'Lost' focused on passengers of a jetliner that crashed on a mysterious island not found on maps.
合理的解释并未遏制人们的想像力。大获成功的美国电视连续剧《迷失》(Lost)就讲述了一架飞机在一个地图上没有的神秘小岛坠毁后，机上乘客的相关故事。

Disappearances are often simply accidents in remote locations, based on an analysis of planes that eventually showed up. Air France Flight 447 vanished for more than a day before searchers found floating pieces of the Airbus A330.
从对一些类似事件的分析来看，飞机消失往往是在偏远地区失事。法航447航班在消失了一天多以后，搜救人员才发现了这架空客A330客机的漂浮碎片。

Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett disappeared in September 2007 while flying a single-engine propeller plane near Yosemite National Park in California. It took more than a year to find the wreckage.
2007年9月冒险家史蒂夫•福赛特(Steve Fossett)在加利福尼亚州约塞米蒂国家公园(Yosemite National Park)附近驾驶一架单引擎螺旋桨飞机失踪，一年多以后人们才找到了飞机残骸。

Other accidents are often too difficult to investigate, or the small number of people killed is deemed too low to merit a costly search. 'It is very expensive to do,' said Mr. Stone, the accident investigator.
其他一些事故往往难以调查，或者说由于遇难人数较少，兴师动众地去搜索被认为有点不值得。斯通表示，那样做成本太高。

The Boeing 707 that crashed off Japan in 1979 had six people aboard. A Boeing 727 that sent distress messages and vanished after taking off from Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1990 had 18 people aboard. Neither was ever found.
1979年一架载有6人的波音707飞机在从日本起飞后失踪。1990年一架从冰岛雷克雅维克起飞的波音727飞机发出遇险信息并消失，机上载有18人。这两架飞机均未找到。

On rare occasions, disappearances are solved by passengers. On Oct. 13, 1972, a Fairchild FH-227D with 45 people aboard, including a Uruguayan rugby team, crashed in the Andes while flying from Argentina to Chile -- an incident later dramatized in the 1993 film 'Alive.' Twelve passengers died immediately or were missing and the others waited in the freezing heights for rescue, some eventually resorting to cannibalism to survive.
也有极少数情况下乘客自救生还。1972年10月13日，一架载有45人（包括一支乌拉圭橄榄球队）的Fairchild FH-227D飞机在从阿根廷飞往智利的途中在安第斯山脉失事，此事后来被改编为1993年的电影《天劫余生》(Alive)。当时当场死亡和失踪的乘客有12名，剩下的乘客则在冰峰上等待救援，一些人不得不通过食人肉求生。

When no help arrived, three of the 16 survivors in December set off for help. After one turned back to ration food, the remaining two men walked for seven days before they spotted a sign of civilization: an empty soup can and a horseshoe. Two more days passed before they found men on horseback who sent for help. Helicopters were dispatched to retrieve the remaining survivors.
由于没有等来外界救援，同年12月16名幸存者中有3名开始动身寻找救援。当其中一人返回找食物时，另外两人继续行走了七日，最终发现了人迹：一个空的汤罐和一个马蹄铁。又过了两天，他们发现了骑马的人，这些骑马的人为他们找到了帮助。于是直升飞机开过来救走了这些劫后余生的人。

Modern technology increases the chance the Malaysia Airlines flight will be found, the Air France crash suggests. While floating wreckage of that Airbus plane was found in less than two days, weeks of deep-sea searches turned up no sign of the fuselage or pings from beacons on its recorders.
从法航那次事件来看，现代化的技术会使马航航班被找到的几率提高。虽然搜救人员在不到两天的时间内就找到了法航空客飞机的漂浮残骸，但在之后数周的深海搜索中都没有见到飞机机身，也没有收到记录仪所发出的信号。

Two subsequent searches were conducted using progressively more-sophisticated remote undersea vehicles, advanced sonar equipment and computer modeling of tidal patterns. Within days of launching the third search, almost two years after the crash, the wreckage was discovered.
之后的两次搜索动用了越来越复杂的水下遥控工具、先进的声纳设备以及计算机模拟洋流。在第三次搜索启动几天，也就是失事约两年后，法航的失事飞机残骸终于被找到。

'There's going to be a trace somewhere, it will be found,' the Smithsonian's Mr. van der Linden said of the Malaysian plane. 'It may be a surprise about where it's found, but we don't know what happened on the airplane.'
范德林登在谈到马航失联客机时表示，一些地方势必会留有踪迹，会找到的；最后发现它的地点或许会出人意料，但我们不知道飞机上究竟发生了什么。