Pan Am flight 73 hijacking, takeover of a Pan American World Airways jet on September 5, 1986, by hijackers linked to the Abū Niḍāl Organization. A 16-hour standoff at Jinnah International Airport in Karāchi ended with 22 hostages dead and some 150 injured.

Pan Am flight 73 hijacking Air Marshal Khurshid Anwar Mirza, director of the Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority, speaking at a press conference during the Pan Am flight 73 hijacking, September 5, 1986. Moin Bangsh/AP Images

On September 5, 1986, Pan Am flight 73, a Boeing 747, departed Mumbai for New York with scheduled stops in Karāchi and Frankfurt. At around 6:00 am passengers were boarding in Karāchi when four heavily armed men dressed as security personnel stormed the plane, firing shots in the air. Acting quickly, flight attendants alerted the bridge, and the flight deck crew escaped through an emergency exit in the cockpit. The 379 passengers and crew aboard were held hostage as the hijackers demanded a pilot to fly them to Cyprus, in order to free “friends” in prison there. To enforce the demand, the men selected and executed an American citizen, Rajesh Kumar. Efforts by the hijackers to identify other Americans were frustrated by flight attendants who hid the passports of the remaining American passengers. The hijackers also threatened to blow up the aircraft with all passengers on board.

The deadlines set by the hijackers went unheeded as they pursued discussions with a local Pan Am representative and Pakistani police. By about 9:00 pm, the plane’s onboard power supply had been exhausted. The lights dimmed, and the hijackers forced the hostages to gather in the center of the plane. Shortly thereafter, the plane went completely dark as the emergency power ran out, and the hijackers, thinking that the plane was being assaulted by security forces, fired on the hostages with machine guns and grenades. Twenty-one hostages were killed, and scores were injured. Some of the hostages were able to force open a number of escape doors, and flight attendants helped the surviving passengers flee the aircraft. The assault ended only when the gunmen ran out of ammunition, and members of the flight crew reentered the aircraft to aid the wounded as three of the four hijackers fled. All four hijackers were eventually apprehended by Pakistani police and imprisoned.

The crew of Pan Am flight 73 saved countless lives by demonstrating remarkable bravery and composure in the face of mortal danger. Senior flight attendant Neerja Bhanot, who was fatally wounded in the hijackers’ final assault, was posthumously recognized by the Indian government with the Ashoka Chakra, its highest peacetime award for gallantry. Bhanot’s life and the events of the hijacking were dramatized in the film Neerja (2016).

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Lead hijacker Zayd Hassan Safarini was released from prison in September 2001, but he was arrested by U.S. authorities days later. He pled guilty to 95 charges, including murder, air piracy, and terrorism, on December 16, 2003, and was sentenced to 160 years in prison.