UTA Flight 141

UTA Flight 141 was a charter flight operated by Union des Transports Aériens de Guinée.

On Christmas day, 25 December, 2003, the airplane crashed in the Bight of Benin, killing 151 of the 163 occupants, most of them Lebanese.

Flight 141 was flown on 3X-GDM, a Boeing 727-223, on the day of the crash. The airliner had begun its flight in Guinea and stopped in Sierra Leone and Benin on its way to Lebanon. Many of the passengers were workers who were flying back home to Lebanon to enjoy the holidays with their families.

Initial reports pointed to the possibility that the airplane might have clipped a building with one of its wings upon take-off, causing it to lose balance and go into an uncontrollable free-fall.

Some newspaper reports have led many to suspect that the airplane used for this flight was, in fact, an airplane that had disappeared about one year earlier, after being flown to Africa by an American pilot, Ben Charles Padilla.