Pan Am Flight 73: The 1986 Karachi Hijacking P3

well Mr. Michael John, please come to the front of the play.

“We carry out dead with us. Not metaphorically, not poetically, but literally,”

in the way we feel in our chest, in the way certain words catch in our throats. And how the world looks different after someone we love disappears from it. When Michael fixed and bought a pan and flight 73, he was carrying his brother. He gone to Pakistan to stand where his brother had fallen and say his final goodbye. And now he was going home, back to the parents who had already buried one son,

back to a family fraction by loss. He didn't know that in a few hours,

he would be on his knees at the front of that plane. That hijackers would be hunting for Americans. And when a flight attendant managed to hide the American passports, when there were no more Americans left to find, Michael would become the next best thing. A British citizen close enough. And he would believe with absolute certainty that he was about to die.

And he didn't know that the very grief he was carrying, that unbearable weight of his brother's death,

“would become the only thing he had left to offer.”

Chapter 7. Mr Michael John, please come to the front of the plane.

But we sat there with their hands in the air. And that's hard. Journalists said did they beat you? And you could obviously see that they were hoping for the answer yes, they want something gory to put in a mix and they made a sit with their hands in the air for an hour now. And that's not very exciting. But it's quite hard to get across really how hard it is to go through some physical discomfort and be utterly terrifying for an extended period.

That's really hard. And there would be people who got off that plane who were in bits and couldn't really understand why, you know, almost it would be better for that person psychologically. If they'd been beaten because then everybody would know this was really tough. They told the people sitting by the windows to pull the blinds down so that we would then completely sealed off. In between these announcements, we just had the plinky plunky music that they used to

play. I don't think they'd do anymore. But they used to play this music before you took off. And it was on an endless loop. And all day, all day, we had the entertainer. Going round and round and round, I don't think there must have been one or two other songs.

“But the entertainer is what I remember as completely surreal. There's sort of silence.”

Everybody looking around. I'm thinking, who's in front of me? It's a very brutal thing to think. But it's very comforting. I'm sitting next to me with two people who looked to me to be North American. I was thinking, they look like they're in front of me. On the floor beside me, a Pakistani man and his probably teenage daughter, he was whispering to her, "This will be all right in Shala, God willing." And of course, yeah, I was the yes God willing. But he's looking at me and thinking,

he's in front of us. You know, he's a Western. And the people, the Pakistanis and the Indians would know that the language that the hijackers were talking was Arabic. Americans, they looked absolutely sick because they couldn't see anybody. There was a problem there. As a situation unfolded, another reality began to settle over the cabin. This wasn't just a plane full of passengers anymore. There was a cross-section of nationalities.

And everyone on that plane understood quietly that wherever you were from, there might suddenly matter more than who you were. People began to look at one another differently. Indian and Pakistani passengers, many of whom understood the regional tensions at play in the language being spoken, felt a fragile sense of distance from the danger. They looked toward the European passengers. Assuming that Western nationals would draw attention

Because in the mid-1980s, Americans were really neutral targets. At that time, the United States

“was deeply entangled in conflicts across the Middle East and South Asia. It was backing military”

regimes, funding proxy wars, and exerting influence far beyond its borders. For militant groups, American citizens represented power, leverage, and symbolism all at once. Targeting Americans wasn't just about violence. It was about visibility. American hostage guaranteed international attention. It guaranteed headlines. It guaranteed pressure. And everyone on that plane knew it.

The American passengers knew it. Most of all. They understood there was no one ahead of them

in the unspoken hierarchy of risk. No other nationality to deflect attention onto.

As the Gavin Field was uncertainty, they sat knowing that if the hijackers needed to make a point, it would likely be made through them. No one said it out loud, but the silence between the passengers told the story clearly enough.

“And that way of announcements, does anybody know how to operate the cockpit radio?”

And this was, well, confirmation that the pilot wasn't there. Couldn't understand why, but obviously the pilot could do that. And I remember feeling right there, and then this huge feeling of relief. We haven't got a pilot with stuck on the ground. That's great. I realized at the time that that was a good thing. Did you get any sense of feeling of how many there were? Did you think

there was more than there were or less than the were? Or do you know exactly how many there were? One of the things I have thought of over the years is the fact that we talk about terrorism, and terrorism is the sort of global political problem and terrorists do this and terrorists do that. But to be terrorized individually, it's a tremendously personal and physical and mental thing. We were terrorized and I was deprived of the capacity for rational thought.

I was so sort of enclosed in my little space, tucked up behind this seat. I could get no sense of what was going on.

“Obviously a high stress situation, are you talking with any passengers or are you just dead?”

I say a word, I'm just going to sit here and say nothing. People could whisper to each other. I mean, I suppose that's the function of the blanky blocky music. It didn't sound like absolutely silent. I'm a whisper to this man, where are you from when he said North America and that was all he was prepared to admit. But it was very, very quiet, very calm. I think three quarters of the people on the

plane or more were Indians and Pakistanis who thought this is not our problem and they were prepared to just sit there and wait and we just had to sit it out hoping that it would be a resolution. Really quite surprising how calm it was on that plane. Michael Beliefs at the main reason that everyone was seemingly so calm was because they hadn't actually really witnessed anything that would suggest that these men would be violent towards them.

Yes, okay, they'd hijacked a plane, they had guns, but so far no one had been here to abuse, no one had so much as had a gun put to their heads and threatened with death. Although, that was soon about to change. As the leader of the group led his way down the aisle and began looking for an American.

The first couple of people who said to you, American, and they wisely said no,

are you American? No, are you American? And I hated it, he was a southern Indian, but he had a green card and the leader just said come with me and took him forward to negotiate over him in the front doorway with the man outside who had a megaphone and he said, you know, unless you give us a crew, I'm going to shoot this man with format burst into tears and you know, you pleaded for his life. The leader said, you know, you have 15 minutes to come back with something.

The man on the top act turned away and the leader shot. At approximately 10 a.m., Saffarani went through the plane and arrived at the seat of Rajesh Kumar.

naturalized as American citizen. Saffarani ordered Kumar to come to the front of the aircraft

“and to kneel at the doorway, face the front with his hands behind his head.”

Saffarani negotiated with officials in particular the Raff de Roga, the head of Pan Am's Pakistan operation stating that if a crew was not put on that plane within 30 minutes, Kumar would be shot. Shortly after, Saffarani became impatient with officials and grabbed Kumar, shooting him in the head. In front of witnesses both on and off the plane. Saffarani then heaved Kumar out of the door onto the ramp below. Pakistani personnel on the ramp reported that Kumar was still breathing

when he was placed into an ambulance but would be pronounced dead on the way to the hospital.

Although the first passenger had been murdered in cold blood, Michael and the other passengers at the

“back of the plane in a economy never heard the gunshot. So at this stage, are completely unaware”

of the real and serious danger that they are all in. I was sitting there, curled up in my aisle seat, a few rows further back, much looking much more western than him and feeling quite safe. You know, this is okay, this is going all right, we could go home here. That's of course from the outside and the outside is point of view. That was the first evidence. Yes, these people are brutal murderous and

that changed the situation from the outside is point of view. The leader now decided that he wanted

to get some Americans. So he told Sunshine, he said, go back and collect people's passport. So

“there's announcement, ladies and gentlemen, hold your passports up there. The W had they will be collected.”

With no crew on board to fly the plane and no crew seemingly arriving, the hijackers were growing impatient and were going to keep killing passengers until the authorities gave in to their demands. And so the hunt was on again for more Americans on board the plane. Michael being British, he believed that he would be safe from the hangman's news. So to speak. People hand their passports in and you haven't. You're the invisible man,

you know, it's not that you've gone to the back of the queue. You're not even in the queue at all. Because it doesn't work if they only got 10 passports split in general. That's the solution. And with my hand in the air, with my passport, there was another announcement. And the two Americans beside me just sort of groaned with relief because it gave them an excuse not to hand something yet. And they've been that their passports were upfront in their

hand luggage. But and I thought, well, can I sort of do a little magic disappearing trick and make my passport go back down my sleeve somehow or something. But the Pakistani man in the in the aisle, he took it out of my hand and handed it to Sunshine. So you're coming past with the bag. Obviously, I thought, that's a British one. Get that in the paper. With the passports collected, Michael again still felt relatively calm. Again, the hijackers were specifically looking for

Americans. However, there was something that he wasn't counting on. And what I hadn't allowed for was Sunshine, just an extraordinary woman, an extraordinary brave, but also clever woman. She had decided, he's going to kill American. So I'm going to give her an American. But then she, you know, that's brave, because nobody could possibly criticize her for just doing her job or doing what she was told under threat of a gun. But then she thought, actually, he's not going to believe it.

If there are no American passports to talk, he's not going to be going to know what I've done. So if a white person handed her an American passport, she got rid of it. She discarded it, put it in a pocket, gave it back them. But she kept in the pile passports with Indian names or faces, Pakistani names and faces. And she persuaded him that these people are really, they're not Westerners. These are American passports, but they're not, they're not what you want.

So she went through the pile with one of her colleagues. And there were

“three or four white American passports. And right under his coach, got rid of her, she hit them for a seat,”

and just the most staffling act of bravery that you can imagine. Once she persuaded him that all the

Americans on the plane were not really Americans, promoted the British as the second most

impossible people throughout Arab terrorists. And so the next announcement was, "Wait, is the gentleman, one must know I don't go on. Please scale to the front of the plane." Chapter 8, Neil here. So that's my first two names. And I thought, well, that has to be me, I can't be a coincidence. But I had a moment before, yeah, I was going to wait until I got my name right. And I tried to persuade myself that maybe my parents had got a message through and, you

know, on compassionate grounds that were going to let me off the plane. My parents don't even

“know I'm on this plane. I'm not supposed to be on this plane. My t-shirts says that Mary's”

hospital medical school, answering expedition, maybe they want a doctor. No, there's no connection

between my t-shirt and Michael John Thxton. That's, it's just ridiculous. And they want to shoot me. I just couldn't understand why. Sitting in his chair, I mean disbelief, and trying to convince himself that the page was not for him, all of a sudden the plane's announcement goes again. Would Michael Thxton please make his way to the front of the plane. He could no longer deny it. It was him. And he had no choice but to get up

and go. So I stood up with what Mike well had been my last words, which were, the fuck say, and I thought that my mother might have said, did he have some last message for us? And well,

that would have been it. And I walked forward and presented myself to the van at the second door.

I said, that's me. And he waved me through. And by the front door, there is the leader, the man I'd seen coming through the front door at the beginning of the hijack. He's now taken his shirt off, being muslim man, probably a bit over six feet tall. He's got this big collationic off with two magazines taped together with sticky brown tape. He's got my passport who has had a four flight attendant sitting in the four doors and me four seats in me to do. And then, and as I walked forward,

“he said, you Michael John Thxton, and I said, yes, I am. He said, where are you from?”

Us, I'm from London. He said, are you a soldier? Now I mean, I suppose my passport photo is probably why they're picking me out of the very, it looked clean, cut, young, I said, no, I'm not a soldier, I'm a teacher. Now I was explaining the telling the story to a friend of mine the following week. And he said, he said, you really can't bear to admit to anybody that you're a childhood accountant, can you? And I said, I just thought in that moment, I don't really want to say,

I'm a capitalist imperialist running dog. I think I'll say teacher, that's a sort of more street credible occupation. I teach a captain, so I said, I'm a teacher. He's pointed to these cinecomers still having around my neck, said one of these, I said, the cameras I've been making a film, they got taken off and tossed him on the overhead lockers and they looked me in the iron, he said, do you have a gun? I mean, I was probably close to fairly uncontrollable hysterics,

I said, I haven't got a gun, you've got all the guns around here. And he said, Neil here, and but oh's the Michael at the time, but he is about to kneel down at the door in the very same spot that only a matter of a few minutes earlier, Rajesh Kumar have been shot in the back of the head and thrown from the plane. He didn't know, but the crew and everyone placed at the front of the plane, did know, and they watched on and waited to see what would happen next. Although Michael

wasn't aware of the man who died before him, he did realise that he was in a grave situation, one where his life could be well and truly on the line. So before he kneels in the doorway, he makes one plea to the man with the gun. And I said to him, I said, please don't hurt me,

just he just waved to hand as if to say, I'm busy, and I've got no time for that. But he put his hand

in my shoulder and maybe kneel down behind the door. Now these doors sort of open by tilting, and there's a sort of crack of daylight and then they swing out the side. And it was open on the tilt and so he stood one of the flight attendants in that crack of daylight and she spoke to the man on the tarmac and said, he said, tell him that if anyone comes near the plane, if any U.S. troops

“come near the plane, we will kill one body immediately. That's what I was to him, one body.”

Until him I have all my men and commanders and I have bombs on board. And this voice came back from the outside telling there's no need to hurt anyone. There's a member of the pan and ground crew on board who can operate the cockpit radio and if you speak to us on the cockpit radio, we will withdraw everyone from around the plane. This was great. And you know, this is a fantastic piece of negotiation because it worked. You would think during such a high-stakes high-jacking,

with so many lives at stake there would be some sort of high-level government official trained police negotiated, and to speak with the high-jackers. However, the man negotiating with the high-jackers was the pan-airm station chief, Verafteroga. Again, luckily for those passengers on board because

“Verafteroga was determined to keep the plane grounded. He had been on a course run by his airline”

on how you deal with their plane by a jack, so he knew what to do. And what the all of the Pakistani government officials wanted to do was stick a pilot on that plane and get it out of there, which he said completely the wrong thing. Verafteroga said, "No, we will deal with it here. No, we will not give them a crew. I will do anything that is necessary to make sure that you do not fly this plane out of here." But he didn't want to identify his own employee.

You know, the negotiator should not be that involved. But now he knew that somebody was going to be shot. So he said, "I've got this ground crew member on board who can operate the cockpit radio." So they made an announcement and this man came forward up the aisle. And so the technician who had been on the plane appears and he's taken upstairs to the cockpit with the leader of the crew.

Another man came down and guarded me. The door was shut and I was left there kneeling on the floor by big pile of passports. And that was where we had arrived at. And I had gone from thinking people get off hijacks. Probably someone will get shot, but it doesn't have to be me. Well, it's going to be me. And I have to say, you know, 37 years later, I still can't see any other conclusion from this point. That is what's going to happen.

If there's extraordinary. So in that moment, obviously, you know, I've spoken to a number of

people now have been through incredible things. And one thing we've sort of always come back to

this feeling of guilt as opposed to fear or, you know, anything like that is more to do with guilt about the situation that they'd found themselves in. Was there any, obviously, your parents had lost a son? And now there's this distinct possibility, as you said, even 37 years later, you don't know, there's no other way out of this. You are about to also now be deceased. In that moment, were you thinking about your parents and your family and, you know, here's another son now,

it's going to be lost? Yeah, so I mean, I don't think I would say it was guilt in that moment. I just felt terribly sad for them. I knew how awful it would be, you know, I knew how awful it had been when Peter died. And I felt just sadness. You know, I had spent the previous two months thinking about death, mainly Peter's death, but occasionally my own death when doing things that I regarded as a bit excessively dangerous. But I just felt really sad for my family.

And I whispered to one of the flight attendants, please tell my family that I love them very much.

And she said, don't worry, that way nothing will happen or something, but I have never been able

to watch flight 93, which is, you know, the film about the 9/11 hijack, where, you know, that's the critical moment where the people are told to ring their loved ones and say goodbye. And, you know,

“I know that that's what you would want to do. And how awful it would be to do it. And the”

odd thing was that the feeling that maybe she would be able to pass that message on, it made me feel

people I thought I would miss and who might miss me. And I got round eventually to a couple of

people on the expedition that I had not really got on with. And I thought, well, is that all saying, don't let the sun go down on your anger. And the odd thing was, then, odd to thinking about the hijack is that I thought, don't let the sun go down on your anger. I don't want to die,

“angry with these people. I don't want to die frightened of these people. And I mean, I think”

it's a combination of so many things. And I went to Sunday school in the, in the 60s, I read certain type of comic, where there was sort of British heroes of the Second World War who had strong jaws and, you know, would laugh at the face of danger and so on. And I knew how a British gentleman was supposed to behave in this situation. And I would be going to be stoic about it. And if the leader came down, he said, right, I'm going to shoot you now. I did term in,

I was going to offer to shake his hand and be, you know, ridiculous about it. But so, you know, all right, who have your reasons, I don't agree with them, but make a clean job of it. And I don't hate you. And you know, I have no idea if I could have carried that through. Fortunately,

I never found out. Yeah. After I had determined that, he didn't frighten me anymore.

So he says he no longer held any fear for the leader. The man he believed would almost certainly shoot him. However, he did fear, the young man who was now guarding him. A boy of what he believes to be just 17 and who was very jumpy and aggressive and looked as though he would likely shoot Peter in the legs simply because he didn't know what to do with his gun. Michael says that at one point, as he's sitting there on the floor, the leader would take a seat

with him in the flight attendants and start flirting with the women, telling them how brave they are and that he was going to fly them all to the beach in Cyprus. And while this was all going on, up the aisle walks one of the hijackers. He had hand grenade, the pin wrapped around his finger, and he was using, he was smoking, chain smoking cigarette. He had the pin of this hand grenade who was holding the lever down with his thumb. And I have very little knowledge of hand grenades.

This is certainly the closest I've ever been to one. But my understanding is if he let's go, the lever, the thing spring flies out and the thing will go off. And the pin can be put back but only before the lever has been released. And he was apparently going around the plane just showing everybody that if they try anything with him, he's going to drop the hand grenade and

“we're all going to die. But he doesn't care. Anyway, came forward. I think that he was”

one of the more strict Muslims on the team. And he looked rather disapprovingly at the leader and flirting with these women in their short skirts. And he looked at me and he showed me the hand grenade. I don't know, hand grenade, thank you. Turned around, he went back and he went into the toilet, which I could again see just behind where they were sitting. And I remember the thing he wanted. What's he going to do with that hand grenade while he's having a pee? And a moment later,

there was a lot. Ah, ah, ah, ah, going off. And the leader jumped to his feet. The flight said, "Don't worry. He's smoking in the toilet. It's the Marula." And the way back she opened the door, apparently he was sitting on the toilet holding a gun at her head. And she said, "Excuse me, reach up, turn this thing off." Fantastic. Grace under pressure. And of course, you know, it could have been a catastrophe. The man could have dropped his hand grenade, a bass, the leader could have

opened fire. And the negotiators in the in the controller are there on T-break, they're thinking, "Oh, well, you know, nothing to do for it. Finally, they're shooting the passengers. What what has happened?" Well, something unexpected has happened. I think now the unexpected thing

would be a passenger having to go at the hijackers because of 9/11. And you would never be able

to predict when that would happen. But that was probably the most dramatic thing that happened all day. Apart from, of course, have this life and death situation would come to its final conclusion. Without warning near 10 p.m., the power suddenly went out. The plane was thrown into darkness.

“The horrible ending was about to begin. I only remember, bye. And thinking is that hand grenade?”

Surely a hand grenade would be louder than that. And then unmistakably automatic gunfire.

[Music]