The mysterious Pan Am Flight 914 took off from New York City in 1955 but landed in Venezuela in 1985 – Thirty years after it had taken off!

On July 2, 1955, Pan Am Flight 914, with 57 passengers and four crew members on board, took off from New York City airport for Miami, Florida. During its usual course, the flight duration would have been a couple of hours. However, neither the radars at the Miami control tower show any approaching aircraft, nor did they receive any distress signals.

When people at the Miami control tower contacted the New York control tower, they were told that Pan Am Flight 914 had lost contact immediately after the take-off and disappeared from the radars. 

A rescue operation was immediately deployed to locate the missing aircraft. However, the rescue team could not locate the plane or the debris. The plane was assumed to have crashed on its course to Miami and the investigation into the case was closed.  

On March 9, 1985, in Caracas, Venezuela, air traffic controller, Juan de la Corte, was going about his job as usual when he noticed a dot that appeared on the radar all of a sudden. Initially, what Juan thought to be a mistake, was an aircraft that was approaching Miami airport.

When the plane was at a sightable distance, Juan and his colleagues noticed it was an old worn down DC-4 McDonnell Douglas aircraft, which had propellers, unlike modern planes which have turbines. 

The pilot of the mysterious aircraft contacted the control tower and asked, “Where are we?”. Juan informed him that the flight was a short distance from Caracas airport. Juan then asked the pilot, “Where the flight was headed for?”. After a short pause, the pilot answered, “We are Pan Am Flight 914, heading from New York to Miami, Florida, with a crew of 4 and 57 passengers on board.” The pilot, then, said his flight was scheduled to land in Miami at 9:55 am on July 2, 1955. 

Juan was perplexed – the flight that usually lasts a couple of hours is here – 1100 miles off its route and thirty years after it had taken off in New York! Nevertheless, he cleared the plane for the landing before asking further questions.

The plane made a smooth landing, and the ground handling team was rushed-in to assist the crew and passengers. The ground handling team could see the surprised faces of passengers in the window, probably they were bewildered to see the new world.   

Juan then composed himself and asked the pilot, “Do you know today is March 9, 1985?”. In return, Juan could hear the pilot’s panicky voice saying, “No, stay away, we are leaving now!”. The pilot then started to frantically wave at the ground handling team, to stop them from approaching the plane. While waving, a small calendar fell out of the window from the pilot’s hand.    

The pilot then started the engines, made a hasty turn back to the runway, and took off without even waiting for take-off clearance. The plane was seen in the air for some time after which it disappeared as abruptly as it had arrived. 

The calendar, dropped on the runway from the plane, was found to of the year 1955 – the year of the flight’s first disappearance.   

The calendar and voice recording of the conversation between Juan and the pilot were seized by authorities for investigation. No information on the incident was ever shared, fuelling the involvement of the paranormal force in the incident. 

The most popular theory is that the disappearance of the aircraft is a ‘Time Travel’ or ‘Time Elapse’ incident. Proponents of the theory believe the plane went back through the same ‘Time Elapse’ moment after it left Caracas. 

As with D.B. Cooper, the hijacker of Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, the disappearance of Pan Am Flight 914 remains shrouded in mystery.

The story was first published in 1985 by the Weekly World News. The publication published the same story twice again, but the date of the plane’s arrival was changed from 1985 to 1992, and images of two different persons were shown as witnesses Juan de la Corte in later versions, casting a shadow of doubt on its credibility. The publication (now a website) is notorious for such outlandish stories, which are more of gossip than news.  

In 2019, the YouTube channel – “Bright Side” revived interest in the mystery after it featured a video on the story. The video has garnered more than 17 million views to date. 

The mysterious disappearance of Pan Am Flight 914 is also covered widely by the paranormal and UFO blogs. 

Strangely, not a single media of repute has covered the incident, which makes the story more of a myth than a reality. 

Real or a figment of imagination, the story indeed evokes a strong interest from the paranormal and UFO enthusiasts the world over.