Air France Flight 8969

Air France Flight 8969 (AF8969,AFR8969) was an Air France flight that was hijacked on December 24 1994 at Algiers. The crisis was ultimately solved with minimal casualties to innocents by the GIGN, the intervention group of the French Gendarmerie, a law-enforcement agency.

The raid

At 17:08 on the day after Christmas, the commandos were poised along to take the plane, but just then the Airbus began to move on the runway toward the Air Traffic Control Tower. All of the careful positioning done to conceal the Special Forces units from being detected had to be altered as the aircraft moved to within thirty meters of the tower.

Related Topics:
Air Traffic Control - Special Forces

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The commandos were forced to storm the cockpit and first class section, where the majority of the hijackers were accumulated. Suddenly, AK-47 fire erupted from the cockpit of the Airbus, shattering glass in the control tower.

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Captain de Favier gave the signal and the commandos moved in towards the Airbus on board mobile staircases and catering equipment. Snipers already positioned in the tower began to return fire, being careful not to hit any of the crew in the cockpit. As the mobile staircases reached the right hand door to the first class area, one of the commandos manipulated the hatch's exterior mechanism as bullets struck the thin aluminum exterior of the aircraft.

Related Topics:
Sniper - Bullet

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After the pilots had crouched down in the cabin as far as they could, the commandos tossed stun grenades into the cockpit and first class section and boarded the aircraft. They caught the first hijacker off guard as he was sprinting down the aisle, but the other hijackers in the cockpit area returned a barrage of automatic weapons fire that struck a gendarme in the chest. Suddenly one of the hijackers tossed a grenade down the aisle, as the commandos scrambled to get out of the way and provide cover for the passengers, the device exploded sending shrapnel into the legs of nearly everyone in the first class compartment.

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The ensuing firefight injured ten commandos, thirteen passengers and three members of the crew. The hijackers were killed. The gunfire was so fierce that the co-pilot of the Airbus jumped out of the cockpit window to the concrete twenty-five feet below, breaking his leg. The GIGN deployed all of the emergency escape chutes to allow the people to evacuate the aircraft during the firefight that lasted nearly twenty minutes that at last left the four hijackers dead.

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