On September 4, 1954, Santiago Airlines Flight 513 departed from Aachen, West Germany, destined for Porto Alegre, Brazil. The flight should have taken around 18 hours.
Instead, it took 35 years. On October 12, 1989, without any contact with air traffic controllers, Santiago Flight 513 was spotted circling the Porto Alegre airport, where it eventually made a successful landing.
Another of Several Unsolved Aviation Mysteries
It’s not unheard of for planes to disappear, though there’s usually evidence of what probably happens during those events to indicate that the plane has crashed — debris, luggage, or, at a minimum, records of the pilot radioing for help…
Then there are those aircraft that set off, traveling from point A to point B, and are never heard from again, with nothing left behind, no reports of distress — not even poor weather conditions to pin the blame on. These stories, though puzzling and eerie, have occurred often enough to have attracted the expertise of scientists and meteorologists (along with other theorists), looking for a pattern among the disappearances. Perhaps the most famous of these incidences are tales from the Bermuda Triangle, the legendary vortex where aircraft and ships just seem to vanish without a trace.
It was thought that Santiago Flight 513 would go the way of the unexplained vanishing aircraft — after all, no one expects an airplane to finally land after 35 years missing. And it, too, disappeared without a trace, devoid of any communication with airport bases, and showing no signs of distress.
What Happened to Santiago Flight 513?
There was nothing abnormal about the aircraft, the crew, or the passengers. Santiago Flight 513 had taken many similar intercontinental flights across the Atlantic Ocean as it did on the day it went missing. On this particular fateful trip in early September 1954, the flight took off with 88 passengers and four crew members.
When it went missing over the Atlantic Ocean, emergency search and rescue teams scoured the area, but to no avail, eventually giving up the aircraft, and everyone aboard, for lost.
It would be an understatement to say that when Flight 513 flew into Porto Alegre it was unexpected. At first, authorities demanded to know why its pilot had flown in without warning.
But when they approached the craft and took note of its age, they were baffled to discover that it belonged to Santiago Airlines, an airline that had shut its doors in 1956.
Upon opening the doors, authorities found something still more shocking: the skeletons of 92 people, buckled into their seats. The skeletal body of Captain Miguel Victor Cury was found in his pilot’s seat, hands on the controls, with the engine still humming.
Could It Be a Government Cover-Up?
While the Brazilian government did investigate this strange occurrence, it refused to offer any explanations or theories, much less draw any conclusions. All officials eventually admitted was that the plane had appeared suddenly in the skies and landed successfully — a write-off that has resulted in many people suspecting government involvement in the disappearance.
Such unresponsiveness — interpreted as secrecy — from the government has evoked ire from the public over the years. Roderigo de Manha, a former physics professor in Porto Alegre, came out saying, “The public has a right to know everything about this plane, and the government has a duty to tell them.”
Spokespersons like Manha have been joined by others calling for full disclosure, including Dr. Celso Atello, a paranormal researcher, in speculating that the government is actually hiding concrete evidence that wormholes exist, and that the plane had been lost in one for more than three decades.
Read More – Unsolved: The Mysterious Disappearance of Santiago Flight 513
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