A Douglas DC-4
A Douglas DC-4, similar to what was used during the hoax

Pan Am Flight 914 is a hoax that a Douglas DC-4 disappeared after takeoff in 1955 and only landed again three decades later. The story has remained popular on the internet, featured on channels like Bright Side.

Story

The hoax alleges that a Pan Am Douglas DC-4 with 57 passengers and 6 crew members disappeared without a trace on a flight from New York City to Miami on July 2, 1955. After 30 years (37 in some sources), the plane was sighted again near Caracas. After landing at the airport there, the plane immediately took off again and finally landed at its original destination in Miami. A 2019 YouTube video of the case has been viewed millions of times. In Internet forums, there was speculation, among other things, as to whether it had been a journey through time through a wormhole.

Several fact-checkers have proven that this was a mislead from the Weekly World News, a newspaper known for its made-up stories, which was published three times (1985, 1993, and 1999). The alleged image of the plane is a photo of a TWA (Trans World Airlines) DC-4; the photo of the alleged eyewitness, a Venezuelan air traffic controller, shows different people in the various articles from the Weekly World News. Furthermore, there are no contemporary sources of the incident in the press or the Civil Aeronautics Board accident reports.

Furthermore, there is no indication in any of the full production lists for the DC-4 that such an event took place on any of the 1,244 machines of this type built, including the Pan Am.[1][2][3][4]

References

  1. ↑ Ford, Edward (November 1967). "THREE AUSTRALIAN MEDICAL HISTORIANS: LESLIE COWLISHAW, JOHN HOWARD LIDGETT CUMPSTON, AND WILLIAM JOHN STEWART McKAY". Medical Journal of Australia. 2 (21): 927–933. doi:10.5694/j.1326-5377.1967.tb21986.x. ISSN 0025-729X.
  2. ↑ Eastwood, Tony (2007). Piston Engine Airliner Production List. The Aviation Hobby Shop, West Drayton. pp. 213–271.
  3. ↑ "Accident list: Douglas DC-4, Aviation Safety Network".
  4. ↑ "Aviation Safety Network: Pan American World Airways (Pan Am)".
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