Ambushed On A Summer Day

It was the summer of 1985, I had taken my annual vacation from work and had planned to go spend a week in Cyprus, an island that is 265km from Lebanon by sea. During that time the news of the hijacked TWA airplane[1] was on every news station and the latest update was that it had landed in Beirut airport carrying a number of hostages. Well, that broadcast did not delay my travel plans nor did it even place doubts in my mind to change plans because political and security instabilities had become normal life for us, having gone through 10 years of war then. The airport was open for planes to land and take off and that meant that I can go ahead with my travel plans.

My Dad drove me to the airport and saw me checking in through security and customs. He then left to go about his work and I waited at the assigned gate for the plane to start boarding its passengers. We boarded the plane and thankfully I was assigned a window seat which made me look forward to taking pictures during take-off and landing. The wait in the plane was long and the pilot was announcing one delay after the other claiming its due to “traffic delays”. After one hour of waiting, we heard the echo of explosions. It was not too loud as the people in the plane were starting to get restless and noisy, but through the noise, we could still hear the echo of what seemed to be more than one explosion.

I looked through the window, and I could see a dark cloud of smoke with fire flames coming out of the cockpit of a plane that was parked at a distance. Well, that plane was the hijacked TWA airplane![2] Later we knew that the hijackers had released the hostages and then blew up the bombs they had planted on the plane.

After another long wait, the plane started to move and we took off to our destination. It was a short, one-hour, flight. And as we got closer to Cyprus, where we could see it at a distance, there was a commotion caused by someone that had gone to use the washroom and come back. He was claiming that the plane had been hijacked. He did not scream or announce it publically, but he whispered it to his group of people and the rumor started spreading across the plane.

Up till that time we have not heard from the stewardess nor did the Pilot make any announcements yet, but the seatbelt light lit up and we were asked to buckle our seatbelts.

As we drew closer to our destination I could see through the window that the plane was going in circles over the airport area as if the Pilot was waiting for instructions; then suddenly the plane started going down at a speed that was beyond what I had experienced during my previous travels. As the plane was descending at a high speed, it started shaking, and that caused major panic. The landing was rough and because of the plane speed, we passed the terminal and stopped very close to the runway borderline.

Immediately after the plane stopped there was an announcement that there’s a person on the plane that was causing some trouble and that security had been notified. I looked through the window and I saw the Cypriot army surrounding the plane, and it wasn’t too long before they announced that the plane had been hijacked and that people need to stay calm in order to continue negotiations with the hijacker. Passengers were in shock; I didn’t know what to think! It was like I had a brain freeze! It felt like my mind was suddenly swamped with thousands of unorganized thoughts that my brain could not comprehend anymore...

Within five minutes, which seemed like one hour, they asked the passengers to leave the plane through the back door. And since the plane's backdoor was not commonly used by the crew, it did not open fully; so the stairs could not fit against the edge of the door. There was no time to manipulate the door to cooperate so we had to jump to the stairs, run to the terminal, pass through the hallways and leave the terminal; by that time we were the only people running through the terminal as they had evacuated the building. Once outside, we were told that the hijacker had agreed to release the passengers but not the luggage.

Thankfully, my friend was waiting for me outside the terminal, she comforted me and then asked about what had happened. In about an hour a settlement was reached with the hijacker and our luggage was released. To my astonishment, I was told by some passengers, and later read in newspapers, that there were two Americans on our plane that were earlier kept hostages in the hijacked TWA and were released that day to board our plane seeking to return to the USA!!!

The trauma was major, yet the immunity and resilience I had built up during the Lebanese war had allowed me to move on quickly considering that incident to be one of the many war experiences I had to deal with.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_847

[2] https://legacyofgena.medium.com/the-real-story-of-the-1985-hijacking-of-twa-flight-847-e091f4acf7ef