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ON THIS DAY IN 1986, FLIGHT ATTENDANT NEERJA BHANOT DIED SAVING THE LIVES OF PASSENGERS ON PAN AM FLIGHT # 73: She was just two days short of her 22nd birthday. Flight #73 originated in Mumbai and was ultimately bound for New York. It was initially carrying 394 passengers, 9 infants, 19 Indian flight attendants and an American pilot and co-pilot. During a stopover in Karachi, four heavily-armed hijackers—part of the Abu Nidal Organization–stormed the plane. Alerted to the hijacking, the pilot and co-pilot escaped from the cockpit via the Inertial Reel Escape Device, thus leaving the aircraft immobilized on...

On September 5, 1986, Neerja was just two days away from her 23rd birthday. She was working her first flight as head purser on Pan Am Flight 73 when it was hijacked on the ground in Pakistan by four armed men. It was thanks to Neerja's lightning-quick thinking that the cockpit was warned and the pilots were able to escape — as is protocol — leaving the hijackers with no way to fly the plane. She also hid the passports of 41 American passengers so that the hijackers could not target them as intended; hiding some under seats and throwing...

WASHINGTON: Half of India's population today wasn't born when she died in 1986 in a hail of gunfire on a hijacked plane after courageously saving scores of passengers, a feat for which she was posthumously awarded the Ashoka Chakra in India, Tamgha-e-Insaniyat in Pakistan and the Justice for Crimes Award in the US. Earlier this week, some 24 years after her heroism, one of her killers died a dog's death in the badlands of Pakistan, reportedly shot to pieces in a US drone attack. The saga of Neerja Bhanot transfixed India at a time where there was no 24-hour news...