Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What personal burdens does Michael Thexton carry after surviving the hijacking?
We all carry something we can't put down. Maybe it's something someone did to you, something that was taken, a moment where the world revealed itself to be more cruel, more random or dangerous than you wanted to believe. A grudge, an anger, a hurt. And once you know that, once you've seen it, felt it and survived it, you have a choice to make.
You can let it boil inside you, let it become the lens through which you see everything else, let the person who hurt you continue to hurt you, year after year, long after they've even forgotten your name. Or you can do the harder thing. You can talk about it until the words lose their venom. You can look directly at what happened and refuse to let it own you.
You can even, and this is the part that seems impossible, Try to understand the person who did it.
Chapter 2: What choices did Michael face during the Pan Am Flight 73 hijacking?
Not forgive, necessarily, not forget, but understand. When Michael Thexton came home from Pan Am Flight 73, he would have to make a choice about what to do with what had happened to him. However, before that choice, he first had to survive what was about to be an explosive end to a siege that had lasted over 15 hours.
moon in the sky i'm looking at the moon in the sky it shouldn't come as a surprise but i can't sleep war in my mind i'm trying to fight a war in my mind i don't know who's the winner tonight but it ain't me
Chapter 9. You could tell something was going to happen.
I was actually asleep on the floor, curled up on the floor, and the guy with the young aggressive one woke me up by kicking my feet. He said, up, up, move, move. I picked myself up and stumbled back down the aisle again towards the economy class.
As Michael walks towards the rear of the plane, he notices that it's far darker and stiflingly warm, as the ground power unit that is used to power the plane while on the ground was slowly shutting down.
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Chapter 3: How did the atmosphere change as the hijacking progressed?
That's not supposed to run for 15 hours or whatever, how long we've been there. It had broken down, and so the plane was on battery power, and all the electrics were failing very quickly. So the air conditioning had gone, the lights were going, the music had stopped, God bless it stopped. And so I went through into the economy class. Everything was exactly as I had left it.
I had sort of got this idea during the day that maybe they'd let the women and children off, but everybody was still there. Everybody was looking very scared. I saw a different seat, a window seat this time, again, a few rows in front of the wing exit. And I went and slipped in there and got down low. And I thought, I'm back with the others. I stand a chance. This is amazing.
But you could tell that something was going to happen. It was very tense. It got completely dark, completely quiet. And when the lights were completely out, again, people say that the hijackers were shouting things to each other. I don't remember that. I only remember...
Chapter 4: What events led to the explosive end of the hijacking?
and thinking, is that hand grenade? Surely a hand grenade would be louder than that. And then, unmistakably, automatic gunfire from the front of the plane just a few yards away.
The leader of the group had taken his weapon and unloaded an entire magazine into the first few rows that were filled with terrified passengers. Then more machine gun fire coming from the very back of the plane.
It was utter chaos on board as the terrorists had reached their breaking point and the mission had changed and all that was left for them to do was try and kill as many people on that plane as they could.
And then the leader has changed his magazines. Let's go the second magazine into the front of the plane and then from the back of the plane. There are apparently the marks or the evidence of six hand grenades thrown among the passengers.
The noise was deafening as grenades and machine gun fire competed against the screams and cries of people trying to avoid the bloodshed. And all of a sudden, Michael says in his mind, everything fell eerily quiet.
And I lifted my head enough to see on the far side of the plane, door shaped blackness. No, it was different color of black and it was door shaped. And I thought I felt for the man beside me. I said, they've got a door open. We've got to go. And he pushed me back and he said, no, no, keep down, keep down. I wasn't having this. I mean, I knew it would be fueled up to fly to Frankfurt.
I thought it would burn.
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Chapter 5: How did Michael manage to escape from the plane?
And I said, no, it's on fire. You could smell smoke in the air. I said, we've got to go. And so I pushed him out. He made his way to the far side, the starboard wing. I saw that the port wing exit was also open. And I got out. Apparently, I'm about the only person who got out that way. I don't know what, you know, somebody must have opened the door because I didn't. But there was no chute.
Every time you board a plane, you hear it. That call from the flight attendants as the door closes. Doors to automatic. It's background noise, usually part of the ritual of flying, like the seatbelt demonstration and the safety cards you never read. Most passengers don't even know what it means. Well, it means the emergency slides are now armed.
So if those doors are open, the escape chutes deploy automatically. It means in an emergency, there is a way out. But Pan Am Flight 73's doors were never set to automatic. When the hijackers stormed the plane, it of course had not gone through any of the pre-takeoff procedures.
Chapter 6: What was the immediate aftermath for the survivors after escaping?
They were still commencing boarding. So this meant the doors remained disarmed. So when the shooting started, when the chaos erupted and the passengers desperately tried to escape through the emergency exits, there was nothing on the other side. Just an over 20-foot drop to the tarmac. And Michael, standing on the wing in the dark.
There's no way in God's earth I'm getting back on that plane. And so I thought I'll slide off the back of the wing. I'll dangle from my fingertips and it can't be very far from that to the ground. Surely, you know, it was dark and there's nothing to hang onto on the back of a jumbo jet wing. You know, I can, I can tell you that you probably will never find that out from experience.
And so I went off the back of that wing at some speed and there's a moment in the air where you're thinking, well, this is taking a little longer than I was expecting. Um, you know, cause it's a long way down. It's like jumping off the roof of a house, not, not, not out of the upstairs windows. It's a long way to the ground, but, Again, luck.
Here am I, 35 pounds underweight, as fit as I'd ever been in my life, wearing mountaineering boots. There are people who had taken their shoes off on the plane to be comfortable during the day, didn't put them back on again at the end, and they were jumping off the wings in bare feet. And there were some nasty injuries from that.
I landed in a heap on the ground, scratched my elbow on the tarmac, picked myself up and ran away. Again, I can remember looking back at the plane as I was running away from it, thinking, I'm going to wake up in a minute.
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Chapter 7: How did Michael confront the hijacker years later?
I'll be back on the plane. This is the dream. That's the reality. I can't possibly not be on that plane.
Thankfully, he wasn't dreaming. And he was running to the first building he could see. And as he got closer, he spots a number of people who had also managed to escape and more began to congregate.
And somebody said, oh, follow me. And we ran through a gap in the buildings and found ourselves in an enclosed courtyard, you know, like a nightmare with the bogeymen behind us. And we all piled into a store cupboard through a doorway. I must have been first in because I ended up sitting against the back wall with a little flight attendant sitting on my feet.
And she turned to me and she said, I'm very sorry. I'm pissing in my panties. And I said, help yourself. You know, no problem. And we sat there, I don't know, for half an hour, hour, some time, listening to noises which we could not interpret outside, but basically not really wanting anybody to come and knock on the door, particularly anybody in a security guard's uniform.
But eventually, somebody came and hammered on the door. We opened the door, and it was the real army. And they took us back to the terminal building, which was chaos, really.
The Pakistani officials had been putting together a plan to storm the plane.
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Chapter 8: What lasting effects did the hijacking have on Michael's life?
However, everything had suddenly kicked off before they were ready to go. They prepared for this scenario of going in guns blazing, but seemingly hadn't planned for what they were going to do with the hostages when they got them off the plane.
All of them having just been through what was undoubtedly the most terrifying experience of their life were now sort of just milling around, not quite sure what to do or where to go.
Three of the hijackers... tried to mingle with the passengers and were picked up and taken aside because basically
rescued from a lynch mob because the passengers recognized them even if nobody else did yeah um eventually um i met up with a couple of other englishmen one of whom i recognized from his passport photograph which i've been looking at all day thinking why is he not where i am and the three of us went off in a taxi um to the sheraton hotel and spent the night there where i was able finally to place a phone call to my parents and say
I'm alive. I don't know if you have any idea that I might not be. But I did get through a message around about midnight Pakistan time to them to say that I was okay.
Chapter 10. It's good to hear your voice. I remember you well. What's the sort of aftermath from something as horrific as that? You know, I can't even imagine even wanting to get anywhere near an aeroplane again for a long time. I mean, obviously, you want to get home. You don't want to be there anymore. You've got to get back on an aeroplane.
I mean, that must just be terrifying to think you have to get back on a plane.
So Sunday, that was a Friday. Saturday was spent sort of... talking to the world's press who arrived and putting ourselves back together. Amazingly, getting my hand luggage back, the local consul's office was sort of trying to get stuff out of the plane and give it to people it belonged to. I got my passport back. And then on Sunday morning, there was a rumor that Pan Am had sent a plane.
It was everything very disorganized still. And so somebody had laid on a bus and the people in the Sheridan went to the airport, and there was these long lines of people trying to check in. But basically, you know, nobody had a ticket. Quite a lot of people didn't have their passports. Nobody had any luggage. Quite a lot of people weren't there because they were injured and there were 20 dead.
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