歷史上幾個未解的飛機失蹤之謎

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，一架亮銀色波音(Boeing) 727客機從安哥拉首都羅安達起飛後失蹤，之後始終沒有被找到，這使其成爲了史上爲數不多的幾架失蹤商用噴氣式飛機之一。

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.
現實中，大型噴氣式客機的失蹤事件並非小說裏那樣多見，但也確有發生。1979年一架載有6人的波音707飛機從東京起飛後消失在太平洋上空。還有數十架小型飛機在失蹤後杳無蹤跡。

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.
上週六早上，搭載有239人的馬來西亞航空公司(Malaysia Airlines) MH370客機在起飛後失蹤。而令人沒有料到的是其搜尋工作迄今仍毫無進展。之所以這麼說，是因爲出事的波音777寬體客機體積龐大，在失蹤之前與地面多個空管站保持着無線電和衛星聯絡；且失聯時，客機正處於人口密集的東南亞的海域上空，而非某片偏遠的熱帶雨林或大海上。

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.
在航空產業的發展初期就有過飛機失事後再未找到的案例。一些失事飛機在數十年後或因偶然、或經漫長的搜尋最終被找到，雷達、衛星等技術在其中起到了極大的幫助。

But as Flight 370's disappearance shows, technology still has limited reach in some swaths of the planet.
然而此次馬航客機失蹤事件凸顯出這些技術在世界一些地區仍不完備。

'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.'
歐洲航空安全組織(Eurocontrol)前主管、飛行安全基金會(Flight Safety Foundation)主席麥克米倫(David McMillan)說，實際上全球許多地區……的雷達覆蓋都不完整，而該地區顯然有待改善。

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年在這片地區，搜尋人員用了10天的時間纔在蘇拉威西(Sulawesi)附近海域找到了印尼波音737失事客機的首批殘骸。五年前，載有228人的法國航空公司(Air France) 447航班在大西洋墜毀，搜尋隊伍用了36個小時才首次找到客機殘骸的位置。

'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.
國際航空安全調查員協會(International Society of Air Safety Investigators)前主席斯通(Richard B. Stone)說，如果飛機墜入海洋，則其搜尋工作將十分困難。

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.
追蹤航空事故的數據庫公司航空安全網絡(Aviation Safety Network, ASN)列出了1948年以來的80架“失蹤”飛機。據公司總裁Harro Ranter稱，這些飛機的蹤跡及機上人員都未曾被找到過。這其中既包括只有一個座位的螺旋槳飛機，也有2009年在加利福尼亞海岸附近墜毀的美國海岸警衛隊(U.S. Coast Guard) C-130運輸機。

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.
據信在安哥拉上空失蹤的727飛機只載有兩人。當時媒體報道稱，2003年5月25日傍晚，佛羅里達租賃公司Aerospace Sales & Leasing Co.的一位美國機械師在羅安達登上了這架噴氣式客機。該公司是這架機齡18年的飛機的所有者。伴他一起登機的還有一位剛果助理。這兩人均無駕駛該飛機的資格，而該飛機執行飛行任務時一般要求須有三名機組人員。

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.
媒體報道稱，在無授權也無通訊聯絡的情況下，這架飛機開始滑翔。在該飛機起飛並開始飛越大西洋時，其航行燈和雷達收發機仍處於關閉狀態。

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.
這次未授權的飛機離港事件距2001年9月11日的襲擊還不到兩年時間，國際社會對該飛機展開了搜索。美國外交人員和非洲國家政府部門查看了這塊大陸上的機場，希望能找到727飛機落地的跡象。包括聯邦調查局(Federal Bureau of Investigation，簡稱FBI)和中央情報局(Central Intelligence Agency，簡稱CIA)在內的美國國家安全部門還查找了衛星圖像。但沒有人再看見過這架飛機。

'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總裁約瑟夫(Maury Joseph)說，他對這架727發生了什麼一無所知，這是他們一直沒搞明白的事件之一。他說，這麼大的一個物體憑空消失，至今再未露面，這真是前所未聞。

The FBI and CIA didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
FBI和CIA未立即迴應置評請求。

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is one of the first jet planes since then to disappear for this long.
此事發生後，馬航370航班是失蹤瞭如此長時間的首批噴氣式客機之一。

'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.
史密森尼國家航空航天博物館(Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum)航空部門主席範德林登(Bob van der Linden)說，這樣的事太罕見了，所以大家都十分關注。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.
失蹤事件以前更爲常見。埃爾哈特(Amelia Earhart)是在上世紀30年代創造飛行距離紀錄的首批女飛行員之一，並且因此揚名。但她現在還爲人們所記起的一個更大的原因是，她駕駛着洛克希德-伊萊克特拉(Lockheed Electra)飛機進行環球飛行時，在新幾內亞附近失蹤。

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.
時至今日，無論飛行器大小，雷達通常都可對其進行追蹤。但即使到了全球衛星導航和人們以爲的監控遍佈世界各地的時代，地球上仍有大片區域是雷達或常規觀測無法監測到的。

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.
不過其實，人類未觸及的空白區域正在不斷縮小。上世紀70年代，幾架軍用飛機在佛羅里達、波多黎各和百慕大之間位於大西洋的那個地區失蹤後，“百慕大三角區”便引起了美國人的豐富聯想。據說其它飛機和船隻也曾消失於這個三角區。種種超自然的解釋最終被揭穿。

'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.
範德林登表示，百慕大三角區的事故率和其他地方基本相當，只不過相關事件聽上去很神祕罷了。

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.
合理的解釋並未遏制人們的想像力。大獲成功的美國電視連續劇《迷失》(Lost)就講述了一架飛機在一個地圖上沒有的神祕小島墜毀後，機上乘客的相關故事。

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.
從對一些類似事件的分析來看，飛機消失往往是在偏遠地區失事。法航447航班在消失了一天多以後，搜救人員才發現了這架空客A330客機的漂浮碎片。

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月冒險家史蒂夫•福賽特(Steve Fossett)在加利福尼亞州約塞米蒂國家公園(Yosemite National Park)附近駕駛一架單引擎螺旋槳飛機失蹤，一年多以後人們才找到了飛機殘骸。

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.
其他一些事故往往難以調查，或者說由於遇難人數較少，興師動衆地去搜索被認爲有點不值得。斯通表示，那樣做成本太高。

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年一架載有6人的波音707飛機在從日本起飛後失蹤。1990年一架從冰島雷克雅維克起飛的波音727飛機發出遇險信息並消失，機上載有18人。這兩架飛機均未找到。

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.
也有極少數情況下乘客自救生還。1972年10月13日，一架載有45人（包括一支烏拉圭橄欖球隊）的Fairchild FH-227D飛機在從阿根廷飛往智利的途中在安第斯山脈失事，此事後來被改編爲1993年的電影《天劫餘生》(Alive)。當時當場死亡和失蹤的乘客有12名，剩下的乘客則在冰峯上等待救援，一些人不得不通過食人肉求生。

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.
由於沒有等來外界救援，同年12月16名倖存者中有3名開始動身尋找救援。當其中一人返回找食物時，另外兩人繼續行走了七日，最終發現了人跡：一個空的湯罐和一個馬蹄鐵。又過了兩天，他們發現了騎馬的人，這些騎馬的人爲他們找到了幫助。於是直升飛機開過來救走了這些劫後餘生的人。

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.
從法航那次事件來看，現代化的技術會使馬航航班被找到的機率提高。雖然搜救人員在不到兩天的時間內就找到了法航空客飛機的漂浮殘骸，但在之後數週的深海搜索中都沒有見到飛機機身，也沒有收到記錄儀所發出的信號。

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.
之後的兩次搜索動用了越來越複雜的水下遙控工具、先進的聲納設備以及計算機模擬洋流。在第三次搜索啓動幾天，也就是失事約兩年後，法航的失事飛機殘骸終於被找到。

'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.'
範德林登在談到馬航失聯客機時表示，一些地方勢必會留有蹤跡，會找到的；最後發現它的地點或許會出人意料，但我們不知道飛機上究竟發生了什麼。