How Predominantly Muslim Nations Produced Decades Of Aviation Horror

Over the past six decades, air travel has repeatedly been used as a stage for political terror, hostage diplomacy, and outright mass murder by extremists originating from predominantly Muslim nations.

From secular Arab revolutionaries demanding prisoner swaps in the 1960s to radical jihadists turning commercial airliners into guided missiles on 9/11, skyjacking has been a weapon of choice across the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa.

Palestinian nationalist and Left-wing factions like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) pioneered modern aviation terror.

El Al 426 (1968) & TWA 840 (1969): PFLP terrorists started the modern hijacking era, taking over an El Al jet to Algiers and later blowing up the nose section of a TWA plane in Damascus.

Dawson’s Field (1970): The PFLP seized four airliners, eventually blowing up three empty passenger jets in the Jordanian desert.

Sabena 571 & Lufthansa 615 (1972): Black September terrorists stormed a flight to Tel Aviv and later forced West Germany to hand over the surviving Munich Olympics attackers, who had murdered 11 members of the Israeli team at the 1972 Olympic Games.

JAL 404 (1973) & British Airways 870 (1974): Palestinian groups collaborated with international radicals, ending in aircraft explosions in Benghazi and a casualty in Tunis.

Air France 139 (1976) & Lufthansa 181 (1977): The infamous Entebbe hijacking was ended by Israeli commandos — in which Benjamin Netanyahu’s older brother Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, commander of the Sayeret Matkal assault unit, was killed. In the 1977 incident, German GSG 9 forces stormed the “Landshut” in Mogadishu after PFLP terrorists murdered the pilot.

Garuda Indonesia 206 (1981): Indonesian commandos eliminated Komando Jihad extremists in Bangkok.

Kuwait Airways 221 (1984) & TWA 847 (1985): Hezbollah-linked terrorists killed two USAID officials in Tehran and brutally murdered U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem during a 17-day standoff.

EgyptAir 648 (1985) & Pan Am 73 (1986): Abu Nidal Organization gunmen left a trail of bloody carnage, killing around 60 people in a botched Malta raid and slaughtering 20 passengers and crew members on the tarmac in Karachi.

Kuwait Airways 422 (1988): Armed Lebanese terrorists held passengers hostage across three countries for 16 days, leaving two dead.

Air France 8969 (1994): Algerian GIA extremists attempted to crash a flight into the Eiffel Tower before French GIGN commandos neutralized them in Marseille.

Indian Airlines 814 (1999) & Vnukovo 2806 (2001): Pakistani terrorists forced India to release terrorist mastermind Masood Azhar in Kandahar, while Chechen rebels seized a Russian jet bound for Istanbul.

September 11, 2001: Nineteen Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four U.S. airliners, murdering 2,977 people in New York, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania — the deadliest terror attack in human history.

Atlasjet 1011 (2007): Two Al-Qaeda-linked operatives — one Palestinian with a Syrian passport and one Turk — hijacked a Turkish flight demanding to go to Iran, but pilots grounded the plane in Antalya, where passengers dramatically escaped.

EgyptAir 181 (2016): An Egyptian national wearing a fake suicide belt forced a Cairo-bound jet to Cyprus.

Flydubai (2026): A commercial flight was thrown into terror high above the clouds when its own Omani co-pilot stabbed the pilot mid-air, triggering a plummet of roughly 14,000 feet in roughly one minute before the miraculous events by which the plane and its passengers were saved.

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