Pan Am Flight 73

 

Pan Am Flight 73 was a scheduled passenger flight operated by Pan American World Airways from Bombay to New York City via Karachi and Frankfurt. On 5 September 1986, the Boeing 747-121 serving the flight, with 379 passengers and crew on board, was hijacked while on the ground at Karachi by four armed Palestinian militants affiliated with the Abu Nidal Organization. The cockpit crew escaped from the aircraft through an overhead hatch after being alerted to the situation by the flight attendants. Without the cockpit crew, the aircraft was grounded, foiling the hijackers' plan to fly the aircraft to Cyprus and Israel, where other members of their militant group were imprisoned.

While the hijackers demanded that the pilots be sent back to operate the aircraft, they shot an Indian-American passenger. They tried to identify other American passengers, their primary targets, by examining the passengers' passports. The cabin crew concealed the passports under the seats and in the trash chute, preventing the hijackers from identifying the American passengers. After a 17-hour standoff, the cabin lights went out due to a loss of power when the aircraft ran out of fuel. The hijackers opened fire inside the darkened cabin. The passengers and the crew tried to escape through the three exit doors that had been opened. The Special Service Group of the Pakistan Armed Forces stormed the aircraft soon afterward. The hijack and the assault resulted in the deaths of at least 20 people, including the head purser Neerja Bhanot, who was killed while trying to save the passengers.

Five people including the four hijackers were arrested and sentenced to death in July 1988 after a trial. Their sentences were later commuted to life imprisonment. Zayd Safarini, the leader of the hijackers, was later convicted by a grand jury and was sentenced to a 160-year prison term in May 2005. The other four hijackers were released and deported to Palestine in 2008, despite objections from India and the United States. According to US government officials, the hijacking was orchestrated by Libya in response to the 1986 United States bombing of Libya. The four released hijackers are part of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's wanted list with a cash reward offered in 2009 to those who provide information on the whereabouts of the men.

In the aftermath, Bhanot was posthumously awarded the Ashoka Chakra, India's highest peacetime gallantry award in 1987 and the Tamgha-e-Insaniyat, Pakistan's fourth-highest civilian award, among other awards. In 2006, the United States Department of Justice awarded the "Special Courage Award" to the cabin crew of the flight. The incident is portrayed in the 2016 Hindi-language film Neerja, based on Bhanot’s life, and in Hijacked: Flight 73, a 2023 documentary.

Background

Aircraft

Pan Am Flight 73 was a scheduled passenger flight operated by Pan American World Airways from Bombay to New York City via Karachi and Frankfurt. On 5 September 1986, the service was operated by a Boeing 747-121, registered N656PA, which was delivered to Pan American World Airways on 18 June 1971. It was powered by four Pratt and Whittney JTD-7A turbofan engines. It was named as Clipper Live Yankee by the airline initially and was later renamed as Clipper Empress of the Seas. It was later sold to Evergreen International Airlines in 1991, and scrapped in 2015.

Passengers and crew

When the aircraft flew from Bombay to Karachi, there were 394 passengers on board including nine infants. These included 207 Indians, 85 Pakistanis, 44 US citizens and 58 people of other nationalities, mostly from Europe. At Karachi, 109 people disembarked from the flight and a few others boarded the aircraft. At the time of the hijacking, there were 379 passengers and crew members on board the flight, in addition to Pan Am mechanic Meherjee Kharas, who was not a member of the cabin crew but was trapped inside the aircraft during the hijacking while conducting routine maintenance checks.

The cockpit consisted of an all-American crew comprising of captain William Kianka, first officer Conway Dodge Sr. and flight engineer John Ridgeway. There was a 13 member, all-Indian cabin crew headed by senior purser Neerja Bhanot, comprising purser Lillian Netto and 11 flight attendants. There were also three other flight attendants who were pass-riding. Among the passengers were 193 Indians, and 75 Americans.

Hijackers

There were four hijackers led by Zayd Hassan Abd al-Latif Safarini, and including Jamal Saeed Abdul Rahim, Muhammad Abdullah Khalil Hussain ar-Rahayyal, and Muhammad Ahmed Al-Munawar, who were affiliated with the Abu Nidal Organization. While Safarini was a Jordanian citizen, Rahim and Hussain were from Lebanon, and Al-Munawar was from Kuwait.

Hijacking

Hijacking and takeover

Pan Am Flight 73 originated in Mumbai and stopped at the Karachi airport for a scheduled stopover at 4:30 a.m. It was carrying 394 passengers and 9 infants, an American flight crew and 13 Indian flight attendants. A total of 109 passengers disembarked at Karachi. The first busload of fresh passengers from Karachi had barely reached the aircraft standing on the tarmac when the hijacking began to unfold.

The four hijackers were dressed as Karachi airport security guards and were armed with assault rifles, pistols, grenades, and plastic explosive belts. The hijackers drove a van that had been modified to look like an airport security vehicle, fitted with a siren and flashing lights. They went through a security checkpoint up to one of the boarding stairways to Pan Am Flight 73. They rushed up the ramp, firing shots into the air. Another two hijackers joined the first two men, one of them dressed in Pakistani shalwar kameez and carrying a briefcase full of grenades. There was also gunfire outside the aircraft reported around this time, which killed two Kuwait Airways ground staff working on an aircraft nearby. The hijackers fired shots at the feet of a flight attendant forcing him to close the door. Another flight attendant, Neerja Bhanot, was out of sight of the hijackers and relayed the hijack code to the cockpit crew, who subsequently exited the aircraft through the overhead emergency hatch, via the Inertial Reel Escape Device.

After about 40 minutes from the landing of Flight 73, the airliner came under the control of the hijackers. The escape of the pilots immobilized the aircraft.

Demand for the pilots

Within a short time after seizing control of the aircraft, the lead hijacker Safarini realized that the cockpit crew had escaped and therefore he would be forced to negotiate with officials. First and business class passengers were ordered to go towards the back of the plane. At the same time, passengers at the back of the plane were ordered forward. Since the aircraft was nearly full, passengers sat down in the aisles, galleys and door exits.

At approximately 10:00, Safarini went through the plane and arrived at the seat of Rajesh Kumar, a 29-year-old Kenya-born Indian resident of Huntington Beach, California, who had recently been naturalized as an American citizen. Safarini ordered Kumar to come to the front of the aircraft, to kneel at the front doorway of the aircraft, and to face the front of the aircraft with his hands behind his head. Safarini negotiated with officials, in particular Viraf Daroga, the head of Pan Am's Pakistan operation, stating that if the crew was not sent on the plane within 30 minutes, then Kumar would be shot.

Shortly thereafter, Safarini became impatient with the officials and grabbed Kumar and shot him in the head in front of witnesses both on and off the aircraft. Safarini heaved Kumar out of the door onto the ramp below. Pakistani personnel on the ramp reported that Kumar was still breathing when he was placed in an ambulance, but he was pronounced dead on the way to the hospital in Karachi.

Safarini joined the hijackers and ordered flight attendants Bhanot, Sunshine Vesuwala, and Madhvi Bahuguna to begin collecting passports. They complied with this request. During the collection of the passports, believing passengers with American passports would be singled out by the hijackers, the flight attendants proceeded to hide some of the American passports under seats, and dumped the rest down a rubbish chute.

After the passports had been collected, Bhanot came onto the intercom and asked for Michael John Thexton, a British citizen, to come to the front of the plane. Thexton was returning home to England after visiting Pakistan for a personal pilgrimage to Broad Peak, where his brother, a keen mountaineer, had died of altitude sickness in 1983, and boarded the flight in Karachi to disembark at the Frankfurt stop and connect to another Pan Am flight for London. He went through the curtain into the front of the plane where he came face to face with Safarini, who was holding Thexton's passport. He asked Thexton if he was a soldier and if he had a gun, Thexton replied "No." He ordered Thexton onto his knees. Safarini told the officials that if anyone came near the plane that he would go on to kill another passenger.

Viraf Daroga told Safarini that there was a crew member on board who was able to use the cockpit radio and asked him to negotiate through radio. Safarini went back to Thexton and asked him if he was married. One of the hijackers ordered Thexton to return to his seat.[citation needed] Forty years later, Thexton had the opportunity to ask his hijacker why he had not been shot. The hijacker explained that when Thexton had told him that his brother had died, he did not want to leave his mother childless and let him live.

Standoff and gunfire

The hijack stalemate continued on into the night. During the stalemate, American passenger Dick Melhart was positioned by the door and was able to unlock it when the firing started. About 21:00 the auxiliary power unit shut down, all lighting turned off, and emergency lights came on. Passengers at the front were ordered toward the back, while passengers at the back were ordered forward; however, passengers who stood up in preparation of complying with the hijackers' request saw that the aisles were full of passengers (and thus impassable), and simply sat back down again.

With the plane out of power and sitting in near darkness, a hijacker at the L1 door said a prayer and then aimed to shoot at the explosive belt worn by another hijacker near the door. The intent was to cause an explosion massive enough to kill all passengers and crew on board, as well as themselves, but this failed. Immediately the hijackers began shooting their weapons into the cabin at passengers and threw grenades.

Ultimately it was the bullets that created the most damage since each bullet would bounce off aircraft cabin surfaces and create shrapnel. An air hostess at the L3 door opened it; although the slide did not deploy, several passengers and crew jumped down the 20 feet (6.1 metres) to the ramp.

Melhart was able to unlatch the door at R3, the exit over the wing; passengers jumped out from this exit. A grounds staff member trapped on board during the ordeal was responsible for opening the R4 door, which was the only door armed to deploy the emergency slide. Ultimately this slide allowed for more passengers to evacuate safely and without injuries. Bhanot and the other crew members bravely escorted as many passengers as they could first. The other crew survived, but Bhanot was murdered by the hijackers.

Escape and rescue

The Pakistani unit responsible for retaking the plane was the Special Service Group (SSG) which was led by Brig. Tariq Mehmood. The SSG commandos closed in on the aircraft after the power unit went out but did not begin storming the plane until they heard shots fired from within the plane. By the time the commandos reached the plane, many passengers had already begun escaping.

There are some inconsistencies regarding the Pakistani Army's reported response to the generator dying. This confusion was later attributed to a rush by officials to take credit for a successful assault on the hijackers followed by a walking-back of statements once the death toll of the tragedy became clear. Pakistani authorities arrested the four hijackers. Another accomplice, Wadoud Muhammad Hafiz al-Turki, ("Hafiz") was arrested a week later.

Aftermath

Trial and sentencing

On July 6, 1988, the five Palestinian men were convicted in Pakistan for their roles in the hijacking and murders and sentenced to death: Zayd Hassan Abd al-Latif Safarini, Wadoud Muhammad Hafiz al-Turki, Jamal Saeed Abdul Rahim, Muhammad Abdullah Khalil Hussain ar-Rahayyal, and Muhammad Ahmed al-Munawar. The sentences were later commuted to life in prison.

According to a CNN report, Safarini was handed over to the FBI from a prison in Pakistan in September 2001. Zayd Hassan Abd al-Latif Safarini was extradited to the U.S. by the Government of Pakistan. A grand jury later concluded that the hijackers were planning to use the hijacked airliner to pick up Palestinian prisoners in both Cyprus and Israel. He was taken to the United States where on May 13, 2005, he was sentenced to a 160-year prison term. At the plea proceeding, Safarini admitted that he and his fellow hijackers committed the offences as members of the Abu Nidal Organization, also called the ANO, a designated terrorist organization. He is serving his 160-year sentence at the United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Release and subsequent manhunt

Age-progressed mugshot of hijacker Jamal Rahim released by the FBI in 2018

The other four prisoners were deported by Pakistani authorities to Palestinian Authority (PA) against the wishes of India and the United States in 2008. Their whereabouts are unknown; on December 3, 2009, the FBI, in coordination with the State Department, announced a $5M reward for information that leads to the capture of the four remaining hijackers of Pan Am 73.

One of the four, Jamal Saeed Abdul Rahim, was allegedly killed in a drone strike in Pakistan on January 9, 2010. His death was never confirmed and he remains on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list and the State Department's Rewards for Justice list.

In hopes of generating new leads for the alleged hijackers the FBI released new age-progressed images on January 11, 2018. The case is still under investigation by the Washington Field Office of the Bureau.

Possible Libyan involvement

Libya has been accused of sponsoring the hijacking, as well as carrying out the bombings of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 and UTA Flight 772 in 1989.

In August 2003, Libya accepted responsibility for "the actions of its officials" for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, but was silent on the question of the Pan Am Flight 73 hijacking. Libya offered US$2.7 billion in compensation to the families of the 270 victims of Pan Am Flight 103 and,[34] in January 2004, agreed to pay $170 million to the families of the 170 victims of UTA Flight 772. The seven American UTA victims' families refused the offer and instead filed a claim for $2.2 billion against Libya. From 2004 to 2006 the US and the UK jointly opened up relations with Libya, leading to the removal of sanctions imposed and of Libya's inclusion on the list of countries that sponsor terrorism.

In June 2004, a volunteer group of families and victims from the incident, Families from Pan Am Flight 73, was formed to work toward a memorial for those killed in the incident, to seek the truth behind this terrorist attack, and to hold those responsible for it accountable. On April 5, 2006, the law firm of Crowell & Moring LLP, representing the surviving passengers, estates and family members of the hijacking victims, announced it was filing a civil suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking $10 billion in compensatory damages, plus unspecified punitive damages, from Libya, Muammar al-Gaddafi and the five convicted hijackers. The lawsuit alleged Libya provided the Abu Nidal Organization with material support and also ordered the attack as part of a Libyan-sponsored terrorist campaign against American, European and Israeli interests.

British media that was critical of normalisation of relations between Gaddafi and the West reported in March 2004 (days after Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Tripoli) that Libya was behind the hijacking.

As of September 2015, about $700 million of funds that Libya gave the US to settle claims related to Libyan sponsored terrorism has not been distributed to families of victims who were Indian passport holders.

In popular culture

Neerja (2016) is an Indian Hindi-language biographical film based on Bhanot and the incident.

Hijacked: Flight 73 (2013) is a documentary about the hijacking.

Notes

According to Pan Am, there were 379 people on board including 19 crew members. Pan Am lists the names of the 20 people who were killed, including mechanic Meherjee Kharas, who was not a member of the cabin crew but was trapped inside the aircraft during the hijacking while conducting routine maintenance checks. Records from the U.S. Department of Justice, held in the Federal Bureau of Investigation archives, list the death toll as 21. However, other sources such as the BBC and Britannica, report the death toll as 22.

The Inertial Reel Escape Device consists of five metal cables attached to the roof of the cockpit. Up to five crew can reach the roof through an emergency hatch and slide down to the ground retarded by the cables.

According to an India Today report, Neerja Bhanot, the head purser of the flight, alerted the cockpit crew. But other accounts indicate that she had a gun pointed to her head at that time.

The Pan Am executives supported the decision of the flight crew abandoning the plane. Martin Shugrue, the Chief Operating Officer, stated, "In a situation like this, one of our immediate prime objectives (is to) immobilize the aircraft, turn the aircraft into a building."