On 5/9/1986, Pan Am flight 73, en route from Bombay to New York with stops in Karachi and Frankfurt, landed at Karachi airport at 4:30 a.m. The plane carried 394 passengers, 9 infants, and a crew of 14 (one American and 13 Indians). 109 passengers disembarked in Karachi.

As the first bus of new passengers from Karachi arrived, tragedy struck.

Pan Am flight 73. Photo: AFP

Pan Am flight 73. Photo: AFP

At 5:44 a.m., four hijackers, posing as Karachi airport security, armed with assault rifles, pistols, grenades, and plastic explosives, drove a modified van resembling an airport security vehicle, complete with sirens and flashing lights, through security to one of the aircraft's stairs. They boarded the Boeing 747 and fired shots into the air. A flight attendant, shot in the leg, was forced to close the door. Another attendant, unseen by the terrorists, reached the intercom and alerted the cockpit.

Flight attendant Sunshine Vesuwala, a gun pointed at her head, stalled the terrorists as they attempted to breach the cockpit, giving the pilots enough time to escape through an emergency hatch.

The aircraft, and the 365 people on board, were now under the control of the four hijackers.

The hijackers were members of the Abu Nidal Organization, one of the world's most dangerous terrorist groups at the time. The group was responsible for the dual attacks at Rome and Vienna airports in December 1985, which killed 19 civilians and injured over 100; and on 6/9/1986, they attacked a synagogue in Istanbul, killing 22. Israel and the US topped their enemy list, closely followed by the rest of the West.

Pan Am, America's flagship international airline, was a prime target. The quartet planned to fly flight 73 into an Israeli military target, but their plan was foiled from the outset by the pilots' quick escape.

Shortly after seizing the plane, the leader, Zaid Hassan Abd Latif Safarini, a Jordanian, realized there were no pilots and was forced to negotiate.

Outside, Pan Am's Karachi manager, Viraf Doroga, used a megaphone to begin negotiations, telling the hijackers that the airport authorities were searching for pilots to take them to their desired destination.

Around 10:00 a.m., Zaid singled out Rajesh Kumar, a 29-year-old Kenyan-Indian who had become a US citizen two months earlier. He ordered Rajesh to kneel at the front door, facing forward with his hands behind his head. He then threatened to kill Rajesh if pilots weren't brought to the plane within 30 minutes.

Moments later, Zaid, enraged, shot Rajesh in the head in front of numerous witnesses both inside and outside the plane, then kicked his body onto the tarmac below.

Zaid ordered Sunshine to collect the passports of American passengers. "I tried not to give him what he wanted. If they were white Americans, I would drop the passport back in their lap. I hid passports under the seats when he asked me to screen them," she later recounted.

Sunshine explained her strategy: "You can't argue with someone stronger than you, you have to be smart. I didn't think I was going to get out of there alive, so it was better to do good deeds than to hide."

The crew of Pan Am flight 73 were all in their 20s at the time of the hijacking. Photo: BBC

The crew of Pan Am flight 73 were all in their 20s at the time of the hijacking. Photo: BBC

Unable to find any Americans, the terrorists called out the name of Mike Thexton, a British citizen. "I froze when I heard my name. I tried to convince myself there would be some explanation and perhaps they would let me leave the plane, but I couldn’t stop the thought that they were picking me out to be shot," Mike recalled.

Mike was made to sit on the floor with his hands above his head like the other passengers and was kicked hard.

Outside, Pan Am officials continued negotiations. Inside, passengers huddled in the center of the plane, sitting in the aisles, galley areas, and doorways. As time passed, children played to distract themselves from their fear, while adults prayed.

Mike, an accounting teacher, pretended to pray in the Muslim tradition to appease the hijackers. He also pleaded with the leader to spare his life, explaining he had been to the Himalayas to remember his brother, Peter, who had died there three years earlier. "I told him my parents had no one else left, please don't hurt me," Mike recounted.

As their patience wore thin, the hijackers threatened to shoot a passenger every 15 minutes if the pilots didn't appear.

The standoff continued into the evening. Around 9:00 p.m., the plane's power went out, plunging the cabin into darkness. The terrorists shouted and then opened fire, throwing grenades. Bright flashes tore through the darkness as people screamed in terror and pain.

22 people were killed, and over 100 were injured.

"I thought I was going to die," Mike, one of the survivors, recounted in the 2023 documentary *Hijacked: Flight 73*.

Just before the shooting, Mike and Sunshine had been allowed back into the main cabin. "Then they opened fire, everywhere, indiscriminately. I heard grenades, Kalashnikov fire behind me, and pistol fire in front. I heard them changing magazines. Then silence…I looked up and saw the shape of a door against the night sky. I jumped out of the left wing, escaping with a grazed elbow," Mike recalled his near-death experience.

In the chaos and darkness, at least three doors were opened. A flight attendant opened door L3; although the slide didn't deploy, some passengers and crew jumped the 20-foot drop. The R3 emergency exit above the wing was opened by a passenger, and two people jumped from there.

A ground crew member, trapped on the plane during the crisis, opened door R4, the only door equipped with an emergency slide, enabling many passengers to escape safely.

Head purser Neerja Bhanot and other crew members bravely helped passengers escape before returning to the darkened plane to search for survivors. Neerja was shot in the hip and later died in the hospital.

Three of the hijackers were apprehended by airport security while trying to flee. Zaid remained on the plane when Pakistani security forces stormed it.

11-year-old Dwijal Dave survived the 16-hour ordeal. He had been on a family vacation in India and was flying home alone. Dwijal remembered comforting a younger boy across the aisle with a toy car, later taking the boy's hand and realizing he was dead. The incident left Dwijal with a profound sense of guilt: "Why did I survive and he didn't?"

Sunshine was asked to identify the hijackers and taken to the hospital, where the dead were lined up along the corridors. "There was a pile of bloodied shoes and clothes piled up in the basement. It was a very, very sad sight. It made me feel terrible," she said.

Sunshine received thank you letters from passengers for her quick thinking. From Pan Am? A Cross pen.

Sunshine testified at the trial in Pakistan, watching the hijackers smile as witness statements were disregarded. At the time, there were accusations of a government cover-up. High command announced that a raid had rescued the passengers, which witnesses denied; it took 25 minutes for commandos to approach the aircraft after the firing started.

On 6/7/1988, the gunmen and their accomplices were sentenced to death in Pakistan, later commuted to life imprisonment.

Sunshine left India in 1994, continuing to work as a flight attendant until 1995. "I loved my job. I wasn't going to let what happened change that," she said. But she rarely spoke about the hijacking: "I've done a lot of thinking. I used to be a strong person, but it brought out a lot of anger in me. I lost faith in people."

After a years-long legal battle, Pan Am's Indian crew won a partial settlement, less than that awarded to US citizens.

Two weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Zaid, who had been released from prison in Pakistan, was arrested by the FBI and brought to the US. He pleaded guilty to 95 charges, including murder, and was sentenced to 160 years in prison on 13/5/2005.

Mike, Sunshine, and Dave were among those who attended Zaid's trial in Washington in 2003. "He didn't show any remorse whatsoever," Sunshine recalled.

In 2008, Pakistan released the four remaining men, deporting them to Palestine. They remain on the FBI's Most Wanted list, with a $5 million reward for information leading to their arrest or conviction.

Mike continued to have nightmares about the hijacking for two years afterward.

After Zaid's incarceration in the US, Mike wrote the book *What Happened to the Hippy Man?* and began corresponding with Zaid through a friend in the mid-2000s. Mike wanted to talk to him to try to understand what had happened that day. Zaid had never publicly spoken about the shooting on flight 73.

The call from prison came one afternoon in June 2022. "It's good to hear your voice. I remember your face. I can never forget that day," Zaid said softly.

"What had you hoped would happen?" Mike asked. Zaid explained that a suicide mission seemed like the best way out of his troubled life within the organization. "I’m very sorry about that," he said.

He told Mike he had opened fire in a state of panic. Mike said, "I thought you were going to shoot me but you didn't. You put me back with the others." Zaid's broken English reply stunned Mike: "You told me your brother died."

Mike choked up as he recalled how desperate he had been when a gun was pointed at him: "I whispered to a flight attendant 'Please tell my family I love them very much.'" Mike had no idea that it was the memory of his deceased brother that had spared his life.

Mike Thexton before boarding the flight. Photo: Telegraph

Mike Thexton before boarding the flight. Photo: Telegraph

The hijacking of flight 73, like others, ultimately failed to achieve its objectives. In the same decade, terrorist activity shifted towards bombing aircraft, including the downing of Air India flight 182 off the coast of Ireland in June 1985, killing all 329 on board, and the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland, which killed 270.

Philip Baum, CEO of security consultancy Green Light and visiting professor of aviation security at Coventry University, said: "This was one of the last terrorist hijackings of that era. Hijackings today are incredibly rare, and terrorist hijackings even rarer. They would have to get through a far more sophisticated security system. While explosives, particularly improvised explosives, remain a challenge, it is now very difficult to sneak traditional hijacking weapons through security."

Tue Anh (Telegraph, BBC, India Today)