Pan Am Flight 73 was a Pan American World Airways flight from Bombay, India, to New York City, United States, with scheduled stops in Karachi, Pakistan, and Frankfurt, West Germany.
On September 5, 1986, the Boeing 747 serving the flight was hijacked while on the ground at Karachi by four armed Palestinian terrorists of the Abu Nidal Organization. The aircraft, with 360 passengers on board, had just arrived from Bombay. A grand jury later concluded that the terrorists were planning to use the hijacked airliner to pick up Palestinian prisoners in both Cyprus and Israel.
More than twenty passengers were killed during the hijacking, including nationals from India, the United Kingdom, Italy, Pakistan, and Mexico. All hijackers were arrested and sentenced to death in Pakistan. However, the sentences were later commuted to life in prison. Senior Purser Neerja Bhanot was shot dead and posthumously received four awards: India's highest peacetime award for bravery, the Ashok Chakra Award, the United States Special Courage award, and two awards from Pakistan, which were Tamgha-e-Pakistan, the fourth highest civil award from Pakistan for her efforts to save passengers' lives, and the Nishan-e-Pakistan.
Hijacking at Karachi
Pan Am Flight 73 originated in Mumbai and stopped at the Karachi airport for a scheduled stopover at 4:30a.m. It was carrying 394 passengers and 9 infants, an American flight crew and 13 Indian flight attendants. A total of 109 passengers disembarked at Karachi. The first busload of fresh passengers from Karachi had barely reached the aircraft standing on the tarmac when the hijacking began to unfold.
The four hijackers were dressed as Karachi airport security guards and were armed with assault rifles, pistols, grenades, and plastic explosive belts. The hijackers drove a van that had been modified to look like an airport security vehicle, fitted with a siren and flashing lights. They went through a security checkpoint up to one of the boarding stairways to Pan Am Flight 73. They rushed up the ramp, firing shots into the air. Another two hijackers joined the first two men, one of them dressed in Pakistani shalwar kameez and carrying a briefcase full of grenades. There was also gunfire outside the aircraft reported around this time, which killed two Kuwait Airways ground staff working on an aircraft nearby. The hijackers fired shots at the feet of a flight attendant forcing him to close the door. Another flight attendant, Neerja Bhanot, was out of sight of the hijackers and relayed the hijack code to the cockpit crew, who subsequently exited the aircraft through the overhead emergency hatch, via the Inertial Reel Escape Device.