Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961

Rare card · No. 53454

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 was a scheduled international flight serving the route Addis Ababa–Nairobi–Brazzaville–Lagos–Abidjan. On 23 November 1996, the aircraft serving the flight, a Boeing 767, was hijacked en route from Addis Ababa to Nairobi by three Ethiopians seeking asylum in Australia. The plane crash-landed in the Indian Ocean near Grande Comore, Comoros Islands, due to fuel exhaustion. Of those onboard, 125 of 175 died in the ditching (water landing), including all three hijackers and six of the 12 crew. It was the first recorded instance of the ditching of a wide-body aircraft.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Hugh McMillan, CC BY-SA 2.0