Pilot Vanishes From Flying Plane

A test pilot disappeared from a supersonic jet fighter six minutes after takeoff and left it to fly pilotless for 700 miles for two hours before it crashed to the bottom of the Atlantic about 500 miles west of Ireland after it apparently ran out of fuel, officials said.

Britain’s Royal Air Force and Navy launched a massive air-and-sea search over a large swath of the British Aerospace Harrier jump-jet’s Thursday night flight path, trying to find the civilian test pilot who mysteriously ejected from the cockpit without signaling a Mayday, an RAF spokesman said.