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Aviation History
1989
1989 - 0005.PDF
;i V i ,j .• jjes*? :»• ; -•-• •"v.v--'-i. lf7/ier« houses once stood is a massive crater, believed to have been caused by the impact of a fuel-laden wing The US Embassy in Moscow tells Flight that the reliability of the anonymous call could not be assessed. Embassy staff were advised on December 13 of the warning and Pan Am had been advised, according to the Embassy. US diplomatic staff travel by US airlines, and Pan Am is the only US carrier serv ing the Soviet capital. Staff use the • New York flight from Frankfurt via London as a matter of routine, the Embassy tells Flight. The FAA confirms that the attack warning had been received, but says that it was not at all unusual or uncommon for such threats to be made. Flight PA 103 originated in Frankfurt, passengers flying to London on a Pan Am Boeing 727. At Heathrow, travellers bound for New York trans ferred, with their luggage, to the ill-fated 747, which carried the same flight number. Heath row security regulations require that there is a positive "reconciliation" of luggage with passengers who actually board the onward flight after having arrived on a different aircraft. When the 747 went down there was ,no emergency radio message or transponder selec tion. The aircraft had been transferred normally from London Air Traffic Control Centre to Scottish, and then to Oceanic, with no indication of any problem. Then the flight's transponder return simply disappeared from the control ler's radar screens. Pan Am has only had one of its 747s involved in a fatal acci dent, and that was in the Tene- rife disaster of March 1977, in which the US carrier was exonerated of blame. The Pan Am 747 had been cleared by ATC to cross the runway in thick fog when another 747, carrying out an uncleared take off run, ran into it at high speed, killing 583. The search for bodies and wreckage concentrated in a 20-mile radius centred on Lockerbie. Wreckage was found in six major locations Middle East bomb suspected Confirmation that the Pan Am 747 disaster was caused by a bomb has pointed suspicion at the Middle East. A prime suspect must the shadowy Palestinian group headed by Abu Nidal, whose record of major terrorist attacks is unrivalled. It was Abu Nidal's men who, in late 1985, attacked passengers at Rome and Vienna airports —atrocities which led to the US raids on Libya. Earlier, in 1982, the group tried to assas sinate the Israeli ambassador in London. Abu Nidal's faction bitterly opposes a negotiated, compro mise settlement to the Arab- Israeli conflict. The recent moderation of official Pales tine Liberation Organisation (PLO) policy towards Israel is anathema to Abu Nidal. PLO sources claim that the Pan Am disaster was the result of a bomb planted by Mossad, the Israeli secret service. Certainly, the Israelis have been as deeply dis turbed as Abu Nidal by Wash ington's new dialogue with the PLO. If it was a Middle East bomb, then other strong sus pects must be Iranian factions. Anonymous telephone calls to London news agencies the day after the tragedy claimed that the bomb had been planted by a previously unheard-erf Tehran-based extremist group, the Guardians of the: Islamic Revolution. ThS group had carried out "this heroic execution" in retalia tion for July's destruction of an Iranian Airbus by a US warship. The Iran Air Airbus A300, flying .over the Gulf from the southern Iranian city of Bandar Abbas to Dubai, was hit by missiles from the USS Vincennes, whose crew wrongly thought that it was an Iranian warplane: 290 people died. Another possibility is that the bomb was planted by a Lebanese (Iranian-backed) Shia Muslim faction. Like Abu Nidal's group, the Shia militants see the USA as the architect of many Middle East misfortunes, and have a long history of hostage-taking and terrorism against US targets, including airliners. In 1985 the Hizbollah group hijacked a TWA 727 on a flight from Athens to Rome with 145 people on board: a US Navy diver was shot dead. Other possible candidates are Syria and Libya, which are both deeply antagonistic towards Washington, although neither can be placed high up the list. After the US raids on Libya in 1986, Col Gadaffi swore vengeance against Washington, although his main response appears to have been directed against Britain, from whence the US bombers took off. Syria is capable of bombing civil airliners. In 1986, it masterminded an abortive operation to plant a bomb on an El Al 747 departing from Heathrow. FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL, 7 January 1989 3
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