Air France Flight 8969 (Operation Rock Climber) was an Air France flight that was hijacked on 24 December 1994 by the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria (GIA) at Houari Boumediene Airport, Algiers. The militants murdered three passengers and their intention was either to detonate the aircraft over the Eiffel Tower or the Tour Montparnasse in Paris. When the aircraft reached Marseille, the GIGN, a counterterrorism and hostage rescue unit of the French National Gendarmerie, stormed the plane and killed all four hijackers. Aircraft flying to Algeria faced the possibility of missile attacks. As a result, Air France's flights to Algeria had crews composed entirely of people who volunteered for the route.
Aircraft and crew
The aircraft involved was a 14-year old Airbus A300B2-1C, registered as F-GBEC with MSN 104 and was equipped with two General Electric CF6-50C2R engines.
Bernard Dhellemme, aged 51, was the captain of the flight. Jean-Paul Borderie was the copilot, and Alain Bossuat was the flight engineer.
Police confirmed this plan after a raid on a safe house. The door open warning light in the cockpit indicated to the pilots that another passenger had been murdered. Air France knew that the chef had been murdered as it was listening in on the conversations between the aircraft and the control tower. Philippe Legorjus, a former Air France security adviser, said in an interview that the airline employees "lived through [the event] with great emotion." Zahida Kakachi said Lotfi was calmly trying to convert her and another stewardess to Islam, though Kakachi was only pretending so that she would not enrage him.
Once the hijackers noticed the boarding stairs moving towards them, they recognised the imminent assault. Through the cockpit window, a hijacker fired upon the stairs containing the forward GIGN team. As the first stairs reached the front starboard (right) door, it became apparent that it was elevated too high relative to the door frame for a uniform entry into the aircraft. The GIGN had trained on an empty aircraft, in which the suspension system of the plane was not as compressed, leading to an overestimation of the necessary height of the boarding stairs. After a short delay in repositioning the stairs, GIGN forces were able to enter. The hijackers returned fire, attacking the GIGN forces. One hijacker was killed instantly. Then, the two other units entered the rear of the aircraft. The participants fired hundreds of bullets. Several hours after the incident ended, the Armed Islamic Group, which had claimed responsibility for the event, killed four Roman Catholic priests in retaliation in Tizi-Ouzou, Algeria. Three of the priests were French, while one was Belgian. Flight number 8969 is now a codeshare flight number for Delta Air Lines flight number 1584 between Greater Rochester International Airport and Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
Passengers and crew
Most of the passengers were Algerians; 138 of the passengers were Algerian citizens. A significant number of the passengers were French people leaving Algeria. Captain Bernard Dhellemme said that the hijackers, who had extensively planned the operation, did not anticipate that most of the passengers would be Algerians.
Flight attendant Christophe Morin and passenger Zahida Kakachi co-authored the book Le vol Alger-Marseille: Journal d'otages, recalling the events of the attack and how it had affected their lives.
A one-hour documentary, episode 3 of the UK BBC Two television series The Age of Terror, was transmitted on 29 April 2008. This showed an in-depth reconstruction of the hijacking, and included interviews with passengers, crew, and GIGN commandos.
The 2011 French film The Assault, directed by Julien Leclercq, based on the book L'Assaut: GIGN, Marignane, 26 décembre 1994, 17 h 12 by Roland Môntins, depicts the events of Flight 8969. It was reportedly made with the collaboration and advice of the GIGN.
See also
- Federal Express Flight 705, another hijacking in 1994; foiled by flight crew
- Garuda Indonesia Flight 206, another similar hijacking in 1981
- List of accidents and incidents involving commercial aircraft
- List of terrorist incidents in France
- Lufthansa Flight 181, a similar hijack and rescue incident in 1977
- Singapore Airlines Flight 117, similar hijacking which resulted in a storming of the aircraft in 1991
- United Airlines Flight 93, hijacked by members of al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001 with a plot to crash the plane into an unknown target; foiled following a passenger revolt
- Air France Flight 139, another Air France hijacking involving an Airbus A300