Terrifying aircraft hijacking

Hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 181

1977 Lufthansa Flight 181 was a Boeing 737-230 Adv aircraft named Land shut, hijacked on 13 October 1977 by 4 militants who called themselves Commando Martyr Halime. On 18 October, the aircraft was stormed by  the West German counter-terrorism group GSG 9 in Mogadishu, Somalia, and all 86 passengers rescued. The rescue operation was code named Feuerzauber (German term for "Fire Magic").

At 11:00 am on Thursday 13 October 1977, Lufthansa flight LH 181, a Boeing 737 named Land shut, took off from Palma de Mallorca en route to Frankfurt with 86 passengers and 5 crew piloted by Jürgen Schumann with co-pilot Jürgen Vietor at the controls. About 30 minutes later as it passed over Marseilles, the aircraft was hijacked by four militants calling them "Commando Martyr Halime". Their leader was a Palestinian named Zohair Youssif Akache (23), who adopted the alias "Captain Martyr Mahmud'. The other three were Suhaila Sayeh (22) a Palestinian, Wabil Harb (23) and Hind

Alameh (22) who were both Lebanese.

Akache (Mahmud) burst into the cockpit with a loaded pistol in his hand and ordered Vietor to join the passengers, leaving Schumann to take over the flight controls. Mahmud ordered Schumann to

fly to Larnaca in Cyprus but was told that they had insufficient fuel and would have to land in Rome first.

The Land shut landed in Larnaca, Cyprus, at 8:28 pm. After about an hour, a local PLO representative arrived at the airport and over the radio tried to persuade Mahmud to release the hostages. This only provoked a furious response from Mahmud who started screaming at him over the intercom in Arabic until the PLO representative gave up and left. The aircraft was then refueled and Schumann asked flight control for a routing to Beirut.

Schumann was told by a passing Qantas airliner that Bahrain Airport was closed. He radioed flight control and told them they had insufficient fuel to go elsewhere and despite  being told again that the airport was closed he was suddenly given an automatic landing frequency by the flight controller. They finally landed in Bahrain at 1.52 am the following morning.On arrival the aircraft was immediately surrounded by armed troops and Mahmud radioed the tower that unless they were withdrawn he would shoot the co-pilot. After a standoff with the tower, with Mahmud setting a 5 minute deadline and holding a pistol to Vietor's head, the troops were subsequently withdrawn.

Approaching Dubai, they were again refused landing permission. Overflying the airport in the early light of dawn they could see that the runway was blocked with trucks and fire engines.

The rescuers escorted all 86 passengers to safety, and a few hours later they were all flown to
Cologne-Bonn Airport, where they landed in the early afternoon of Tuesday 18 October, and were given a heroes' welcome.