Pan Am Flight 73

Rare card · No. 36276

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 747-100 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, 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...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Leslie Snelleman, CC BY-SA 4.0