From Amelia Earhart's final flight to a plane that vanished over the Bermuda Triangle, these aviation mysteries continue to baffle historians and Internet sleuths alike. Photo: Everett Collection/Shutterstock The fate of Amelia Earhart The disappearance of Amelia Earhart continues to be one of the most talked-about missing plane mysteries in history. On July 2, 1937, the world-famous American aviator and her partner, Fred Noonan, disappeared in her Lockheed Model 10-E Electra. The pair took off from Lae, Papa New Guinea, with the goal of flying around the world—unfortunately, they lost contact somewhere over the Pacific Ocean and were declared missing the same day. Ships and aircrafts from the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard later scoured more than 640,000 square kilometres of ocean, but Earhart and Noonan were nowhere to be found. Official reports conclude they ran out of fuel, crashed into the Pacific and drowned.