THE MISSING-727 STORY, covered here and on StrategyPage for the last couple of weeks, has now made the Washington Post:

But losing a 153-foot, 200,000-pound aircraft is no common occurrence.

“I haven’t come across this before in 22 years in this business,” said Chris Yates, a civil aviation security analyst for the private Jane’s Aviation service. “It is not a stretch to think this plane could end up in the hands of terrorists. A number of companies involved in gun running [and other crimes] in Africa have indirect ties to various terrorist groups.”

On the bright side, the plane’s history is checkered enough that there are plenty of plausible non-terror scenarios, too.