terrifying aircraft hijacking

Dawson's Field hijackings

1970 In the Dawson's Field hijackings (6 September 1970), four jet aircraft bound for New York City and one for London were hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and instead landed at the PFLP's "Revolutionary Airport". By the end of the incident, one hijacker had been killed and one injury reported.

TWA Flight 741 from Frankfurt am Main (a Boeing 707) and Swissair Flight 100 from Zürich-Kloten Airport (a Douglas DC-8) landed at

Dawson's Field, a remote desert airstrip near Zarka, Jordan, formerly used as a British Royal Air Force base.

TWA Flight 741 ( type Boeing 707, serial 18917/460, registration

N8715T ) was a round-the- world light carrying 144 passengers

and a crew of 11. The flight on this day was flying from Tel Aviv, Israel to Athens, Frankfurt am Main and then to New York City, and was hijacked on the Frankfurt-New York leg. In an interview for the film Hijacked, Flight 741's purser, Rudi Swinkles, recalled, "I saw a passenger running toward first class. I ran after him, and when he came to first class to the cockpit, he turned around, had a gun in his hand, and pointed the gun at me, and said, 'Get back, get back. So right away, I dove behind the bulkhead first class divider, and I hid behind it, over here."

Hijackers gained control of the

cockpit and stated, "This is your new captain speaking. This flight has been taken over by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. We will take you to a friendly country with friendly people"

The hijacking of E1 Al Flight 219

from Amsterdam was foiled: hijacker Patrick Argüello was shot and killed, and his partner Leila Khaled was subdued and turned over to British

authorities in London. Two PFLP

hijackers who were prevented from

boarding the El Al flight instead

hijacked Pan Am Flight 93, a Boeing

|747, diverting the large plane first to Beirut and then to Cairo rather than the small Jordanian airstri

El AI Flight 219 (type Boeing 707, serial 18071/216, registration 4X-ATB) originated in Tel Aviv, Israel, and was headed to New York City. It had 138 passengers and 10 crew members aboard. It stopped in Amsterdam, Netherlands. and was hijacked shortly after it took off from there by Patrick Argüello, a Nicaraguan American, and Leila Khaled, a Palestinian.

Pan American Flight 93 (type Boeing 747, serial 19656/34. registration N752PA, Clipper Fortune) was carrying 136 passengers and 17-crew. The  flight was from Brussels, Belgium, to New York, with a stop in Amsterdam. The two hijackers bumped from the El Al flight boarded and hijacked this flight as a target of opportunity.

The plane first landed in Beirut,

where it refueled and picked up several associates of the hijackers, along with enough explosives to destroy the entire plane. It then landed in Cairo after uncertainty whether the Dawson's Field airport could handle the size of the new Boeing 747 jumbo jet. Flight director John Ferruggio, who led the plane's evacuation, is credited with saving the plane's passengers and crew. The plane was blown up at Cairo seconds after it had been evacuated. An audio recording of Ferruggio's landing instructions to passengers was made by one of them and can be heard in a National Public Radio report.

 

A fifth plane, BOAC Flight 775, a

Vickers VC10 coming from Bahrain,

was hijacked on 9 September by a

PFLP sympathizer and brought to

Dawson's Field in order to pressure the British to free Khaled.