On October 7, 1985, four Palestine Liberation Front gunmen hijacked the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean, holding roughly 400 passengers and crew hostage and murdering 69-year-old American tourist Leon Klinghoffer. Three days later, U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcats forced the hijackers’ getaway plane down in Sicily, triggering a standoff with Italy that nearly…
Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashed on August 16, 1987, seconds after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airport, killing 154 of the 155 people on board. The crew had failed to extend the wing flaps before liftoff — a single pre-takeoff checklist item left unchecked. The sole survivor was 4-year-old Cecelia Cichan, found still strapped in her…
On June 24, 1982, British Airways Flight 9 — a Boeing 747 named City of Edinburgh — flew into an invisible cloud of volcanic ash from Indonesia’s Mount Galunggung at 37,000 feet. All four engines flamed out, turning the 250-ton jumbo jet into the world’s largest glider for 16 minutes. Captain Eric Moody and his…
On June 10, 1990, BA Flight 5390 captain Tim Lancaster was sucked halfway out of a windscreen at 17,300 feet — and survived 20 minutes outside the aircraft.
