Disasters: Suddenly, Lost At Sea

At first, it sounded eerily like those stories about the Bermuda Triangle, that mysterious patch of water and air off the southeastern U.S. where planes and ships inexplicably disappear, never to be seen again. South African Airways Flight 295, bound for Johannesburg from Taipei, was ten minutes away from its scheduled landing on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius for refueling when the pilot radioed the control tower saying there was smoke in the cabin. The Boeing 747 was immediately cleared for an emergency instrument landing. Said Servan Sing, an air-traffic controller on Mauritius: "After that, we had no contact."

For...