NEWSROOM |
|
|
|
|||
By Mike Mitchell |
||||
On November 23,
1996 Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 was hijacked en route from When ET-AIZ, the Boeing 767-260ER (nicknamed "Zulu" by Ethiopian Airlines pilots), entered Kenyan airspace, three Ethiopian men charged the cockpit and hijacked the airplane. According to a special report by Airdisaster.com, "One of the men ran down the aisle toward the cockpit shouting statements that could not be understood, and his two accomplices followed soon after." The report described the men as "young (mid-twenties), inexperienced, psychologically fragile, and intoxicated. |
||||
Ethiopian state-operated radio later identified the hijackers as two
unemployed high school graduates and a nurse, named Alemayehu Bekeli
Belayneh Mathias Solomon Belay and Sultan Ali Hussein (they did not say
who had which description). The men threatened to blow the plane out of
the sky if the pilot, Leul Abate
and the co-pilot, Yonas Mekuria did not follow their demands,
announcing over the intercom that they were opponents of the Ethiopian
government seeking political asylum, having recently been released from
prison. The hijackers said that there were eleven of them when, in fact,
there were only three. Authorities later determined that the bomb was
actually a covered bottle of liquor.
The hijackers demanded the plane be flown to
Instead of flying towards |
The plane was
nearly out of fuel as it approached the island group, but the hijackers
continued to ignore the captain's warnings. Out of options, Leul began
to circle the area, hoping to land the plane at
Leul tried to make
an emergency landing on the airport at
Flight 961 is an
well-known example of why passengers must not inflate lifejackets until
after exiting the plane. The pilot of Flight 961 had advised passengers
to put on lifejackets but not inflate them. However, numerous nervous
and panicking passengers did not heed the warning and inflated them
while they were still in the fuselage. This meant that as the cabin
flooded, they were pushed upward against the ceiling; making it
impossible to dive and reach the exits, leaving them trapped inside the
sinking fuselage. A tourist recorded a video of ET-AIZ crashing; she said that she began taping because she initially believed that the 767 aircraft formed a part of an air show for tourists. |
©AvStop Online Magazine Contact Us Return To News |
|