Pan Am Flight 103

Pan Am Flight 103, registered N739PA and named "Clipper Maid of the Seas", was blown up as it flew over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988, when 12 to 16 oz (340 to 450 g) of plastic explosive was detonated in its forward cargo hold, triggering a sequence of events that led to the rapid destruction of the aircraft. Winds of 100 knots (190 km/h) scattered passengers and debris along an 130 km (81 mile) corridor over an area of 845 square miles. Two hundred and seventy people from 21 countries died, including 11 people on the ground.

The Helsinki warning

On December 7, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a security bulletin saying that, on December 5, a man with an Arab accent had telephoned the U.S. Embassy in Helsinki, Finland, and had told them that a Pan Am flight from Frankfurt to the United States would be blown up within the next two weeks by someone associated with the Abu Nidal Organization. He said a Finnish woman would carry the bomb on board as an unwitting courier. The caller was out by only two days.

Related Topics:
December 7 - Federal Aviation Administration - December 5 - Arab - Helsinki - Finland - Abu Nidal Organization

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The warning was taken seriously at the time by the U.S. government. The State Department cabled the bulletin to dozens of embassies. The FAA sent it to all U.S. carriers, including Pan Am, which had charged each of the passengers a five-dollar security surcharge, promising a "program that will screen passengers, employees, airport facilities, baggage and aircraft with unrelenting thoroughness" (The Independent, March 29, 1990), but whose security team in Frankfurt had found the warning hidden under a pile of papers on someone's desk the day after the bombing (Cox and Foster 1992). One of the Frankfurt security screeners, whose job it was to spot explosive devices under x-ray, told ABC News that she had first learned what Semtex was during ABC's interview of her 11 months after the bombing (Prime Time Live, November 1989).

Related Topics:
State Department - March 29 - 1990 - Semtex

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On December 13, the warning was posted on bulletin boards in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, and eventually distributed to the entire American community there, including journalists and businessmen, as a result of which a number of people allegedly booked on carriers other than Pan Am, leaving seats empty on PA 103 that were later sold cheaply in so-called "bucket shops". PA 103 investigators subsequently said the telephone warning had been a hoax and a chilling coincidence.

Related Topics:
December 13 - Moscow - Hoax - Coincidence

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