Passenger on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 posted a joke about 'disappearing' right before takeoff


A man believed to be a passenger on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 made a joke on his Facebook page right before boarding, referencing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared in March.
Cor Pan (who also lists his surname as Schilder elsewhere online) of the Netherlands snapped a photo of the airplane while waiting inside the boarding area, with a caption that The Washington Post says translates to "Should it disappear, this is what it looks like." He was said to be traveling on the doomed plane with his partner, Neeltje Tol, but Malaysia Airlines has yet to confirm this, and friends did not respond to requests for information from the Post.
As of early Friday, his Facebook post has been shared almost 20,000 times.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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