SIGN UP FOR OUR 
Source: Wikimedia Commons
The frantic search for Malaysia Airlines passenger flight MH370, which never reached its Beijing destination after taking off from Kuala Lumpur, has turned into a hijacking investigation as Prime Minister Najib Razak stated that the Boeing 777-200ER may have been deliberately diverted off course. Hopes of finding the aircraft remain strong; alas, aviation history in Costa Rica shows that if the MH370 crashed, it may never be recovered.
Search and rescue operations to find the MH370, which departed from the busy Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 8th, 2014 with 227 passengers and 13 crew members aboard, have extended from the Gulf of Thailand to the South China Sea and from the Strait of Malacca to the Indian Ocean.
The hijacking theory has prompted data investigators to look into 634 possible airstrips where the hijacked aircraft and the purported hostages may have been forced to land. As reported by the Guardian (UK), investigators from WNYC public radio in New York calculated the range of the MH370 to report on the multiple locations where the aircraft may be in, including Kazakhstan, the Maldives, and even Mongolia.
The Mystery of the TC-48 in Costa Rica
Several days have passed since the last communication from flight MH370; this supports the theory of a possible crash and increases the odds of never finding the aircraft. The Costa Rica Star has previously written in great detail about the disappearance of the TC-48, a Douglas C-47/54 Skymaster operated by the Argentinian Air Force, which presumably vanished over the mountains of Talamanca in 1965 with 68 airmen aboard:
In November 3rd of 1965, a military aircraft from the Argentinian Air Force carrying 68 airmen experienced damage in one of its engines and plunged into the jungle of the indigenous Talamanca region of Costa Rica. More than 45 years later, the mystery of what really happened to the crew and passengers of that unfortunate flight remains.
The murky events surrounding the disappearance of the TC-48 occurred during the backdrop of the Cold War, a time when cloak-and-dagger affairs and cover-ups were commonplace. The maintenance records of the TC-48 were sketchy, and allegations of evidence planting and suppression by the Argentinian Air Force clouded the investigation in the mid-1960s.
A month after the Costa Rica Star revisited the history of the TC-48, a new search effort was announced:
A team of searchers and scientists from Costa Rica and Argentina will once again look for evidence of the crash of the TC-48, one of the most intriguing unsolved mysteries in the history of aviation.
The team will be directed by renowned Tico geologist Wilfredo Rojas, along with scientists and military search and rescue experts from Argentina. One member of the team trained in the Andes. The new stage of the search is part of Operativo Esperanza (Operation Hope), a mission commissioned by the Argentinian Air Force, which is now on its third attempt.
In late 2013, Argentinian filmmaker Pepe Tobal told Argentinian newspaper Los Andes that he was expecting to begin production of an exhaustive documentary about the TC-48, which currently features a working title of “The Final Search.” Mr. Tobal personally knew the late Clyde Zurro, whose husband Mario Nello Zurro disappeared as he commanded the doomed flight. Mr. Tobal has already visited the thick rainforest of Talamanca where he will be filming along with Mr. Rojas.
The rainforest in Talamanca is truly the last wild frontier of Costa Rica. This is a region where mysterious foreign paramilitaries roam, and this is where Mr. Rojas actually ran into an undiscovered volcano on foot in the 21st century. The indigenous people who live in Talamanca know that the jungle will swallow anything organic and otherwise, which explains why the TC-48 has not been found.
Cable TV news network Todo Noticias in Argentina has been reporting on the disappearance of the MH370; a few days ago it drew a comparison to the TC-48 in Costa Rica, which prompted comments by Alejandro Zurro and Cecilia Viberti, relatives of the missing airmen, about the importance of never losing hope and pushing authorities to not give up on their search efforts. For the sake of the loved ones of those aboard Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 and the TC-48 of the Argentinian Air Force, the Costa Rica Star hopes that closure arrives soon.
