🌊 The Hijacking That Made the Modern World

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By Max Frost

History makes the news: In this weekly series, we look at a historical event and how it has shaped the world today. This week’s installment begins at Amsterdam’s airport in 1970 – and paves the way for current conflicts in the Middle East.

On the morning of September 6, 1970, four people attempted to board a flight from Amsterdam to New York on Israel’s El Al airline. Two had Senegalese passports; two had Honduran ones. 

The Senegalese pair struck security as suspicious, though, and were denied boarding. They bought tickets to a different New York-bound flight, Pan Am 93, instead. 

But the “Honduran” couple had no problem: They boarded their flight to New York, found their seats, and took off.

The “Honduran” couple wasn’t a couple at all. It was a Palestinian woman named Leila Khaled and a Nicaraguan-American named Patrick Argüello. Both belonged to a leftist Palestinian organization, the PFLP, which wanted to eliminate Israel and publicize the Palestinians’ plight. 

Khaled was a celebrity in the anti-Israel world: A year prior, in 1969, she had become the first woman to hijack an airplane when she commandeered a Rome-Tel Aviv flight and allegedly made it fly over Haifa, the Israeli city from which her family was expelled. She then underwent six rounds of plastic surgery so she would become unrecognizable and could fly again. 

30 minutes after take off, she stood up and showed the cabin two hand grenades. As unrest broke out, a flight attendant charged Khaled, who tried to break into the cockpit. She later recalled that as she screamed, “Open the door,” a hostess shouted to the pilot, “She has two hand grenades!” 

Khaled shouted, "I will count and if you don't open I will blow up the plane," but the captain – a 39-year-old Israeli – refused. 

“I decided that we were not going to be hijacked,” he later recalled.

Instead, he put the plane into negative-G mode. 

“Everyone would fall,” he said. “When you put the plane into negative, it's like being in a falling elevator. Instead of the plane flying this way, it dives and everyone who is standing falls down.”

Moments later, the plane nosedived, causing the hijackers to fall over. Argüello threw his grenade down the aisle, but it didn’t explode. He drew his gun, but someone smashed a whiskey bottle over his head and an air marshall then fatally shot him. 

Meanwhile, Khaled was subdued and arrested. The plane proceeded to make an emergency landing in London, where Khaled was jailed. But she wouldn’t be there long.

That flight was just one of several carrying hijackers on that 1970 day. 

Groups of two men each hijacked a New York-bound flight from Frankfurt, Germany, and Zurich, Switzerland, and flew these to Dawson’s Field, a remote air base in Jordan. The “Senegalese” group – which had made the last-minute decision to hijack Pan Am Flight 93 after being rejected from the El Al flight – didn’t think Dawson’s Field had room for them, so they picked up a man with dynamite in Beirut and landed their Boeing 747 in Cairo.

On the descent, the hijackers lit the dynamite and warned the onboard flight director, a 45-year-old American World War 2 veteran named John Ferruggio, that the plane would explode eight minutes after landing. Ferruggio told the cabin to stay calm. A recording from the flight captures him addressing the cabin: 

"Now hear this and hear it good. When this plane comes to a complete stop...don’t wait for me, don’t wait for the captain, and don’t wait for Jesus Christ. We are going to evacuate this plane."

The moment the plane landed, Ferruggio began the evacuation. Within 90 seconds, everyone was off the plane. As the final crew members – including Ferruggio – ran down the runway, the plane exploded behind them. Everyone was safe. 

It was "the fastest I’ve ever seen [an evacuation] done and the fastest I’ve ever heard of," Ferruggio later said.

The other hijackers used their stolen planes and hostages to draw the media to Dawson’s Field, Jordan, which became known as “Revolution Airport.” They brought 125 women and children hostages to a hotel in Amman, Jordan’s capital, while keeping the men and American, Israeli, Swiss, and West German hostages on the planes. 

With the press assembled, the hijackers delivered speeches and statements about revolution in the Middle East. One of the hijackers declared that their goal was "to gain the release of all of our political prisoners jailed in Israel in exchange for the hostages."

In the US, President Nixon weighed his options. He then ordered a military strike on positions of the PFLP, the hijackers’ group. But bad weather interfered and the strikes never went ahead. 

On September 9, three days later, another plane was hijacked and taken to Dawson’s Field. Its hijacker demanded the release of Khaled. 

Three planes – and the world’s attention – were now on Dawson’s Field.

Editor’s Note

We hope you enjoyed today’s reporting. Send in your thoughts and reactions by replying to this email! Do you think these 1970 hijackings still shape what’s happening in the Middle East today?

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Thanks for reading! Have a fantastic rest of your weekends.

–Max and Max