When Piper Lance 9H-ABU disappeared on a journey between Tunisia and Malta during the small hours of Sunday, December 3rd, 1995, the only immediately apparent news angle for the Irish and British media was that among the six occupants were 38-year-old Desi Boomer, a service engineer from Belfast, and Liverpudlian Michael Williams, aged 49.
If the aircraft had gone down in the Irish Sea or the English Channel, rather than in the distant Mediterranean, there would undoubtedly have been more extensive follow-up on the story. At that stage, however, there was little to indicate that the incident was any more than just another light aircraft accident. But almost five years later, the mystery of the aircraft's disappearance has deepened, and the whole affair has brewed into a murky concoction, laced with conspiracy theories and suspicions of political assassination, forgery - and even hostage-taking.
Mandy Boomer first heard her husband was missing when two RUC officers visited her at her workplace in Banbridge, Co Down, on the Sunday afternoon. They told her that the air-taxi he was taking on the second stage of his journey home had not arrived at its destination, Valletta in Malta. "Desi had rung me the night before to say that the flight was delayed because of the weather and they were staying overnight in a hotel," she recalls. "He'd started working for a company, servicing `nodding donkey' oil wells in Libya and this was the end of his second six-week stint there."
By the following afternoon, when the Lancashire police brought Julie Donohue similar news concerning her father, Michael Williams, the Maltese Ministry of Transport had already set up a board of inquiry to investigate the disappearance of the Piper Lance. "Initially I was told that the plane had gone down and that survivors had been spotted in a life raft," says Julie. "But when we got to Malta, expecting to hear that they had been rescued, it was a different story."
As the fifth anniversary of the incident approaches, many of the affected parties remain unconvinced by the findings of the public inquiry conducted in Valletta. They were finally released last January, after no fewer than 18 sittings, held over the four-year period. The burden of blame was heaped on the pilot, Carmelo Bartolo, though his family and the families of some of the lost passengers are far from satisfied that the story ends there. Some even doubt that Bartolo was actually at the controls.
It has been established that Bartolo, a Maltese national who learned to fly in the US, held only a private licence for the single-engined Piper Lance. Yet, under the banner of Sun Aviation, one of his two companies, he had regularly flown passengers to three destinations - Djerba and Monastir in Tunisia and Catania in Sicily. Suspecting Bartolo of undertaking these illegal activities, the Department of Civil Aviation reported him to the police but did not fulfil its own obligation to investigate him.
Meanwhile, United Nations sanctions imposed on Libya in 1992, had long been causing severe travel restrictions on foreign workers moving in and out of the country. Boomer had had to drive overland from Tibesti in Libya to Djerba in Tunisia in order to pick up his flight to Malta. This was not unusual; alternative travel arrangements were the order of the day and the climate was ripe for small, independent operators. The Durham-based inspection services company MAPEL, for whom Boomer worked, frequently used the Unique Travel agency in Valletta to book flights for its staff on Bartolo's Sun Aviation service.
According to the departure manifest from Djerba, filed by Carmelo Bartolo, there were five passengers on board. Boomer and Williams were accompanied by another service engineer, Philip Farrugia from Malta, together with Matthew Aquilina, a 21year-old Maltese trainee accountant, and Polish biochemist Tadius Gorny, who also worked for MAPEL.
"There have never been any sworn statements saying that they were seen walking to the plane for take-off," says Mandy Boomer. "It has always struck me as an odd omission in the public inquiry."
But what did emerge in the inquiry report was that it seems Bartolo adopted an almost cavalier approach both to his flying and the care of his aircraft. Despite meteorological warnings about impending thunderstorms, he failed to brief the four passengers on the inward journey, from Valletta to Djerba, about the weather or safety procedures on board. At the inquiry, they spoke of thunder and lightning storms, heavy rain and hail, severe turbulence and the smell of burning rubber before they landed, greatly relieved, at 20.29 hrs on Saturday, December 2nd.
As he left the aircraft, a passenger noticed a torn and shredded drive-belt hanging out between the propeller and the cowling. "The captain just put his arm in and pulled out this belt, all in bits and pieces," he said. But it appears that they did not pass on their concerns to outbound passengers, Boomer, Williams and Farrugia, whom they met and spoke to at the airport.
Tunisian records show the runway lights were switched on for take-off at 03.45 hrs. Radio communication between the Piper Lance and Djerba air traffic control continued until 04.10 hrs, when it suddenly gave out. Considering the severe difficulties experienced on the inward journey, during which it has since been established that the alternator-belt broke, what could have prompted Bartolo to ignore advice from the Met office and risk his own life and those of his paying passengers by taking off in an unfit aircraft, into the eye of a severe storm?
"Carmelo had a lot of flying experience and it is very odd that he would have taken off in those conditions," says his wife, Antonia. Matthew Aquilina phoned home and told his father "hawn tempesta tkisser Djerba". "That is Maltese for `there is a storm that can break Djerba'," translates his mother, Cecilia Pellegrini Petit. "He phoned five times that evening and promised that he would ring again before the plane took off. He never did."
Antonia Bartolo says her husband did not mention mechanical problems with the aircraft. "He had another flight to Catania the next morning. I cancelled it for him, so he wasn't in a hurry to come back. He didn't need it," she says in his defence.
As far as the broken alternatorbelt was concerned, Djerba Airport did not have the facilities to replace it. A mechanic would have had to be flown in to do the repair work and Paul Lehman, air safety investigation manager of Piper Lance Inc, Florida, told the public inquiry that the task would have required special tools and would have taken at least three hours to complete.
"Without an alternator, the aircraft's battery could not recharge and in a limited time the power would run out," he explains. Less than half an hour into the flight, the battery would have been flat and while the aircraft's compass, altimeter and airspeed indicator would have continued to function, it is possible that the pilot could have become disorientated by the conditions. Lehman, who last year investigated the crash in which John F. Kennedy Jnr, his wife and sister-in-law died, was invited to give evidence when wreckage of a light aircraft was dredged up by Tunisian fishermen in the autumn of 1996. "From what I recall, the Maltese had a hard time getting the wreckage from the Tunisians," says Lehman. "Why? I haven't a clue. The only reason I was there was to identify the wreckage."
And there wasn't that much material to work with. Lehman estimates that only about one-sixth of the Piper Lance was recovered. When the plane hit the water at an angle of 35 degrees, nose first, it would have broken into hundreds of pieces, which would have been scattered around the seabed and dispersed by the currents. Among the remains brought up from the depths were two buckled seat belts, which showed signs of having been subjected to great force. From the evidence, Lehman concluded that there were at least two people on board. He saw no physical evidence of any other passengers. Also reclaimed from the Gulf of Gabes were Bartolo's wallet and keys. The forensic evidence, which indicated that they had been exposed to sea water for a long time, did little to allay a growing sense of scepticism.
Antonia Bartolo says: "I had to identify them in court. In the wallet were his business cards. I didn't understand. The cards were really clear. He had more than one licence in the wallet. I can't understand how it was clear as crystal, having been in the water for so long."
In another ironic twist, one of the two licences in the wallet was a photocopy, which obliterated the specific restriction about Bartolo carrying fare-paying passengers in the Piper Lance.
Cecilia Pellegrini Petit, too, is disturbed by these revelations. "Did Matthew and the others board the plane to begin with? Why were there no proper embarkation cards? There was just a piece of white paper with six names written on it and a sort of rubber stamp on the end. It wasn't even signed and there was no letterhead of the airport. I don't think the pilot considered suicide. It is as if something is being covered up."
The commissioner of the board of inquiry, Dr Philip Sciberras of the Valletta legal firm, Sciberras and Lia, when contacted by this reporter, has no appetite for continuing a conversation about the incident. He fends off questions by stating that the Maltese Ministry of Transport does not permit him to comment on the inquiry findings.
But if the Piper Lance took off without any of the five named passengers and was piloted by someone else, what was the reason? Was the aircraft flown by someone who was unaware of the broken alternator-belt and the potentially fatal consequences that lay ahead? Did Carmelo Bartolo have some reason to flee the country, and the faulty plane was his only means of escape? Is it possible that these men are being held hostage somewhere in Libya or Tunisia, waiting for the day when they will be released? These are just some of the questions that are being asked by still anxious families waiting for fresh information.
"We have requested that the forensic evidence be analysed by other independent experts," says Mandy Boomer. "This has not happened yet and from what I could sense at the inquiry sittings that I attended, some of the witnesses were very uncomfortable with the whole business. Some of the evidence offered was totally contradictory.
`When there's no satisfactory explanation, you can see why other conclusions are drawn. Part of me thinks that they never took off at all and they were expendable witnesses to something they were not involved with. But bear in mind that Libya was under close surveillance by satellites and other things. Don't tell me that someone didn't pick up some signals."
The Maltese co-ordinated search and rescue operation was made aware of distress signals being transmitted after the aircraft's disappearance. One signal was traced to Libya, while the others were reported to have been picked up by two supply ships called the Asprey and the Gonfulut. Upon further checks with Lloyd's Maritime Information Service, no trace of these ships could be found.
The rumour mill has churned out yet another sensational suggestion - that the Piper Lance incident was linked in some way to the assassination in Malta, five weeks previously, of Fathi Shqaqi, the leader of the militant Palestinian group Islamic Jihad. It was believed to have been the work of the Israeli secret service agency, Mossad. Did Islamic Jihad's revenge begin that night in Djerba?
The families' desperate quest for knowledge has even included visits to mediums, to communicate with people on "the other side". Some experiences have bordered on the surreal, pointing eerily to places and people in Libya, Tunisia and Italy.
Julie Donohue believes that her father Mike Williams would have been well able to cope with captivity. "He was the national judo coach in Malta. He's strong enough to survive," she says. "I don't talk of him as being dead. I say he has gone away. I dream that he will return." In Banbridge, neither Mandy Boomer nor her five children can begin the grieving process until official death certificates are issued. "Under Maltese law, seven years must pass until death certificates can be issued. It's hard for us to move on until we have them, particularly since the inquiry has determined the plane did crash and that Carmelo Bartolo was responsible."
And while Antonia Bartolo continues to try to defend her husband's reputation, she has since had another terrible loss to bear. Her eldest son, Philip, was found dead in mysterious circumstances two years ago. He was 24 years old.
The Matthew Aquilina website is: www.geocities.com/Yose mite/Trails/9496/matthew.htm
