Pan Am 73, Karachi, 5 September 1986
Four hijackers seized Pan Am 73 on the ground at Karachi on 5 September 1986. Twenty-one people died, including purser Neerja Bhanot.
On 5 September 1986, four members of the Abu Nidal Organization seized Pan Am Flight 73 while it stood at Jinnah International Airport, Karachi. Twenty-one people died — passengers from India, the United Kingdom, Italy, Pakistan and Mexico.
The aircraft was a Boeing 747-121 named Clipper Empress of the Seas.
What happened
The hijackers boarded dressed as airport security guards, armed with assault rifles, pistols, grenades and explosive belts.
The flight crew escaped through an overhead emergency hatch in the cockpit roof. This was not abandonment: without pilots the aircraft could not be flown anywhere, and immobilising it on the ground was the recognised counter-hijack response of the period. It confined the situation to Karachi.
The standoff lasted around sixteen hours. When the aircraft’s auxiliary power finally failed and the cabin went dark, the hijackers opened fire on the passengers and threw grenades.
Neerja Bhanot
The senior purser, Neerja Bhanot, was 22 years old.
It was Bhanot who relayed the hijack code to the flight crew, which is what allowed them to leave and immobilise the aircraft. Through the hours that followed she is credited with hiding passengers’ passports so that Americans could not be identified and singled out, and when the shooting began she opened an emergency exit and helped passengers out.
She was shot dead shielding children from gunfire.
She was posthumously awarded India’s Ashok Chakra, its highest peacetime gallantry decoration, a United States Special Courage award, and Pakistan’s Tamgha-e-Pakistan and Nishan-e-Pakistan — an unusual set of honours from three countries that agree on very little.
Why it belongs here
Most of the 747 accidents on this site turn on engineering: a repair, a fuse pin, a fuel tank, an instrument. This one does not. The aircraft was undamaged in any way that mattered and never left the ground.
It is included because it happened to a 747, because 21 people died aboard one, and because what the cabin crew did that night is part of the type’s history as much as any structural test.
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Tenerife, 27 March 1977
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Japan Air Lines 123, 12 August 1985
A faulty repair failed seven years later, destroying the tail and all four hydraulic systems. 520 died; four survived. The deadliest single-aircraft crash.
Pan Am 103, Lockerbie, 21 December 1988
A bomb in the forward hold destroyed a 747 over Lockerbie, killing 259 on board and 11 on the ground, and reshaped aviation security.
TWA 800, 17 July 1996
The centre fuel tank of a 747 exploded shortly after takeoff from New York, killing 230. It led to fuel tank inerting being mandated worldwide.
El Al 1862, Amsterdam, 4 October 1992
Two engines tore from the wing of a 747 freighter, which crashed into an Amsterdam apartment block. Fatigued pylon fuse pins were the cause.