Philippine AirlinesPhilippine Airlines, Inc. , also known historically as Philippine Air Lines, is the national airline of the Philippines....
Flight 434 (PAL434, PR434) was the route designator of a flight from
Ninoy Aquino International AirportThe Ninoy Aquino International Airport or NAIA , is the airport serving the general area of Manila and its surrounding metropolitan area...
,
Metro ManilaMetropolitan Manila or the National Capital Region is the administrative region encompassing the city of Manila, the national capital of the Philippines. As of the 2007 Census, the population is 11,553,427...
,
PhilippinesThe Philippines officially known as the Republic of the Philippines, is a country in Southeast Asia with Manila as its capital city. It comprises 7,107 islands in the western Pacific Ocean....
, to New Tokyo International Airport (now
Narita International Airportis an international airport located in Narita, Chiba, Japan, in the eastern portion of the Greater Tokyo Area. It is located east of Tokyo Station and east southeast of Narita Station....
),
Narita||-||-||} is a city located in Chiba, Japan. It is the site of Narita International Airport, the main international airport serving the Greater Tokyo Area....
near Tokyo, Japan, with one stop at
Mactan-Cebu International AirportMactan-Cebu International Airport is a major international airport in the Visayas region of the Philippines. It is located in Lapu-Lapu City, Mactan Island, Metro Cebu and is the country's second primary gateway...
,
CebuCebu is a province in the Philippines, consisting of Cebu island and 167 surrounding islands. It is located to the east of Negros, to the west of Leyte and Bohol islands...
. On December 11, 1994, the
Boeing 747The Boeing 747 is a widebody commercial airliner, often referred to by the nickname "Jumbo Jet". It is among the world's most recognizable aircraft, and was the first widebody ever produced...
-283B on the route, tail number EI-BWF, flew on its second leg, from Cebu to Tokyo, when a bomb, planted by terrorist
Ramzi YousefRamzi Ahmed Yousef or Ramzi Mohammed Yousef , birth name possibly Abdul Basit Mahmoud Abdul Karim and also known by dozens of aliases, was born in Kuwait and is of Pakistani descent. He was one of the planners of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing...
, exploded, killing one passenger. The captain of the flight, an experienced veteran pilot, landed the aircraft, saving the plane and all other passengers and crew.
Authorities later discovered that a passenger on the aircraft's preceding leg was
Ramzi YousefRamzi Ahmed Yousef or Ramzi Mohammed Yousef , birth name possibly Abdul Basit Mahmoud Abdul Karim and also known by dozens of aliases, was born in Kuwait and is of Pakistani descent. He was one of the planners of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing...
.
Philippine AirlinesPhilippine Airlines, Inc. , also known historically as Philippine Air Lines, is the national airline of the Philippines....
Flight 434 (PAL434, PR434) was the route designator of a flight from
Ninoy Aquino International AirportThe Ninoy Aquino International Airport or NAIA , is the airport serving the general area of Manila and its surrounding metropolitan area...
,
Metro ManilaMetropolitan Manila or the National Capital Region is the administrative region encompassing the city of Manila, the national capital of the Philippines. As of the 2007 Census, the population is 11,553,427...
,
PhilippinesThe Philippines officially known as the Republic of the Philippines, is a country in Southeast Asia with Manila as its capital city. It comprises 7,107 islands in the western Pacific Ocean....
, to New Tokyo International Airport (now
Narita International Airportis an international airport located in Narita, Chiba, Japan, in the eastern portion of the Greater Tokyo Area. It is located east of Tokyo Station and east southeast of Narita Station....
),
Narita||-||-||} is a city located in Chiba, Japan. It is the site of Narita International Airport, the main international airport serving the Greater Tokyo Area....
near Tokyo, Japan, with one stop at
Mactan-Cebu International AirportMactan-Cebu International Airport is a major international airport in the Visayas region of the Philippines. It is located in Lapu-Lapu City, Mactan Island, Metro Cebu and is the country's second primary gateway...
,
CebuCebu is a province in the Philippines, consisting of Cebu island and 167 surrounding islands. It is located to the east of Negros, to the west of Leyte and Bohol islands...
. On December 11, 1994, the
Boeing 747The Boeing 747 is a widebody commercial airliner, often referred to by the nickname "Jumbo Jet". It is among the world's most recognizable aircraft, and was the first widebody ever produced...
-283B on the route, tail number EI-BWF, flew on its second leg, from Cebu to Tokyo, when a bomb, planted by terrorist
Ramzi YousefRamzi Ahmed Yousef or Ramzi Mohammed Yousef , birth name possibly Abdul Basit Mahmoud Abdul Karim and also known by dozens of aliases, was born in Kuwait and is of Pakistani descent. He was one of the planners of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing...
, exploded, killing one passenger. The captain of the flight, an experienced veteran pilot, landed the aircraft, saving the plane and all other passengers and crew.
Bombing
Authorities later discovered that a passenger on the aircraft's preceding leg was
Ramzi YousefRamzi Ahmed Yousef or Ramzi Mohammed Yousef , birth name possibly Abdul Basit Mahmoud Abdul Karim and also known by dozens of aliases, was born in Kuwait and is of Pakistani descent. He was one of the planners of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing...
. He was later convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Yousef boarded the flight under the fake Italian name "Armaldo Forlani", a wrong spelling of the name of the Italian legislator
Arnaldo ForlaniThis article is about the Italian legislator. For the similar name used as an alias by terrorist Ramzi Yousef for Philippine Airlines Flight 434, see Ramzi Yousef#Philippine Airlines Flight 434....
.
The flight crew consisted of veteran Captain Eduardo "Ed" Reyes, First Officer Jaime Herrera, and Systems Engineer Dexter Comendador.
Yousef assembled a bomb in the lavatory and put it in the lifejacket pocket under Seat 26K on the right-hand side of the fuselage, setting the timer to detonate the explosives four hours later. Domestic flight attendant Maria Delacruz noticed that Yousef kept switching seats during the course of the Manila to Cebu flight. Yousef and 25 other passengers left the plane at Cebu. 256 passengers and a different cabin crew boarded in Cebu. Many of them consisted of Japanese people; some of them were coworkers traveling as part of a tour group. Airport congestion delayed the departure of Flight 434 from Cebu for 38 minutes. All of the passengers boarded by 8:30 a.m.; the bomb had been planted around two hours earlier. PAL 434 cleared for takeoff at 8:48 a.m.
Two hours before arrival at Tokyo, the bomb exploded at 11:43 a.m. while Flight 434 cruised on autopilot above Minami Daito Island, which is located near
Okinawa IslandOkinawa Island is the largest of the Ryukyu Islands of Japan, and is home to Naha, the capital of Okinawa Prefecture...
and is 260 miles (420 km) southwest of Tokyo.
The explosion ripped the body of 24-year old , a Japanese businessman occupying the seat, in half. He was an industrial sewing machine maker returning from a trip to Cebu. The lower half of his body fell into the cargo hold. Ten passengers sitting in the seats in front of and behind Ikegami were also injured; one needed urgent medical care. The bomb tore out a two square foot (0.2 m
2) portion of the cabin floor, revealing the cargo hold underneath, but the fuselage of the plane stayed intact.
Masaharu Mochizuki, a passenger on the flight, recalled that injured passengers initially tried to move away from the blast site, but cabin crew told passengers to remain where they were until an assessment of the situation could be made. Fernando Bayot, a flight attendant covering the forward part of the aircraft, moved an injured passenger away from the bomb site. Bayot then saw Ikegami and tried to pull him out of the hole but soon realized that most of Ikegami's body below the waist was either damaged or missing entirely. Ikegami died minutes later; Bayot called another flight attendant over to pretend to minister to Ikegami's needs with a blanket and oxygen mask in order to prevent additional panic, then reported the extent of the passenger injuries to the cockpit.
Immediately after the explosion, the aircraft banked hard to the right, but the autopilot quickly corrected the bank. After the blast Reyes asked Comendador to survey the blast site to check for damage. Reyes placed the
MaydayMayday is an emergency code word used internationally as a distress signal in voice procedure radio communications. It derives from the French venez m'aider, or m'aidez, meaning ' come help me'. It is used to signal a life-threatening emergency by many groups, such as police forces, pilots,...
call, requesting landing at
Naha Airportis a second class airport located west of the city office in Naha, Okinawa.The primary air terminal for passengers and freight traveling to and from Okinawa Prefecture, Japan, the airport handles international traffic to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, and China...
,
Okinawa IslandOkinawa Island is the largest of the Ryukyu Islands of Japan, and is home to Naha, the capital of Okinawa Prefecture...
,
Okinawa Prefectureis one of Japan's southern prefectures, and consists of hundreds of the Ryukyu Islands in a chain over 1,000 km long, which extends southwest from Kyūshū to Taiwan...
. The Japanese air traffic controller experienced difficulty in trying to understand Reyes's request, so an American air traffic controller from a United States military base on Okinawa took over and processed Reyes's landing. The autopilot stopped responding to Reyes's commands and flew past Okinawa. Reyes said in an interview for the Canadian TV series
MaydayMayday is a documentary television program produced by Cineflix in Canada. It is aired on Discovery Channel Canada and the National Geographic Channel...
that when he disengaged the autopilot, he feared that the aircraft would bank right again and the crew would lose control of the aircraft; however, because of the pressing need to land quickly to attend to the injured and inspect the plane for additional damage, Reyes instructed Herrera to take hold of his own control stick, and then Reyes deactivated the autopilot. The aircraft did not bank after the disengagement of the autopilot, but neither would it respond to steering inputs from either controller due to control cable damage caused by the bomb's explosive energy which made the plane's skin expand rapidly. The crew struggled to use the ailerons, which could allow the aircraft to turn, but still were unable to change the plane's direction. Finally, the flight crew disengaged auto-throttles and resorted to steering via throttle control, reminiscent of
United Airlines Flight 232United Airlines flight 232 was a scheduled flight from Stapleton International Airport, in Denver, Colorado, to O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, and then would continue on to Philadelphia International Airport in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania...
.
By using the throttles to steer the plane, reducing air speed to both control the radius of turns and to allow the plane to descend, and dumping fuel to lessen the strain on the landing gear, the captain landed the damaged
Boeing 747The Boeing 747 is a widebody commercial airliner, often referred to by the nickname "Jumbo Jet". It is among the world's most recognizable aircraft, and was the first widebody ever produced...
-283B at Naha Airport at 12:45 p.m., one hour after the bomb exploded. The aircraft's other 272 passengers and 20 crew members survived.
Location of bomb
The seat where the bomb exploded (seat 26K) would normally be above the center wing fuel tank on an older
Boeing 747The Boeing 747 is a widebody commercial airliner, often referred to by the nickname "Jumbo Jet". It is among the world's most recognizable aircraft, and was the first widebody ever produced...
. However, on the SAS Version model of the 747, used in this flight, seat 26K was two seats forward of the tank. If the bomb exploded in a horizontal manner it would have punctured the aircraft skin, causing
explosive decompressionUncontrolled decompression refers to an unexpected drop in the pressure of a sealed system, such as an aircraft cabin. Where the speed of the decompression occurs faster than air can escape from the lungs, this is known as explosive decompression , and is associated with explosive violence...
. Instead, the explosion occurred in a vertical manner running front-to-back on the plane; Ikegami's body took the brunt of the force, people immediately in front and behind were injured, and the sudden vertical expansion of the cabin severed steel cables controlling the 747's rudder and elevator located in the aircraft ceiling. The bomb also severed the copilot's control cable for the right aileron.
Construction and details of the Bomb
United States prosecutors said the device was a "Mark II" "
microbombA bomb is any of a range of explosive devices that typically rely on the exothermic chemical reaction of an explosive material to produce an extremely sudden and violent release of energy. The word comes from the Greek word βόμβος , an onomatopoetic term with approximately the same meaning as...
" constructed using
Casiois a multinational electronic devices manufacturing company founded in 1946, with its headquarters in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. Casio is best known for its calculators, audio equipment, PDAs, cameras, musical instruments, and watches...
digital watches as described in Phase I of The Bojinka Plot of which this was a test. On Flight 434, Yousef used one tenth of the explosive power he planned to use on eleven U.S. airliners in January 1995. The
bombA bomb is any of a range of explosive devices that typically rely on the exothermic chemical reaction of an explosive material to produce an extremely sudden and violent release of energy. The word comes from the Greek word βόμβος , an onomatopoetic term with approximately the same meaning as...
was, or at least all of its components were, designed to slip through
airport securityAirport security refers to the techniques and methods used in protecting airports and aircraft from crime.Large numbers of people pass through airports. Such gatherings present a target for terrorism and other forms of crime due to the number of people located in a small area...
checks undetected. The explosive used was
liquid nitroglycerinNitroglycerin , also known as nitroglycerine, , trinitroglycerin, trinitroglycerine, 1,2,3-trinitroxypropane and glyceryl trinitrate, is a heavy, colorless, oily, explosive liquid obtained by nitrating glycerol...
, which was disguised as a bottle of
contact lensA contact lens is a corrective, cosmetic, or therapeutic lens usually placed on the cornea of the eye...
fluid. Other ingredients included glycerin, nitrate,
sulfuric acidSulfuric acid, , is a strong mineral acid. It is soluble in water at all concentrations. Sulfuric acid has many applications, and is one of the top products of the chemical industry. World production in 2001 was 165 million tonnes, with an approximate value of US$8 billion...
, and minute concentrations of nitrobenzene,
silver azideSilver azide is the chemical compound with the formula AgN
3. This colourless solid is a well-known explosive.-Preparation, structure, decomposition:Silver azide can be prepared by treating an aqueous solution of silver nitrate with sodium azide...
, and liquid acetone. The wires he used were hidden in the heel of his shoe. At that time, metal detectors used in airports did not go down far enough to detect anything there.
Aftermath
Manila police were able to track the batteries used in the bomb and many of its contents from Okinawa back to Manila. Police uncovered Yousef's plan on the night of 6 January and the early morning of 7 January 1995, and Yousef was arrested a month later in
PakistanPakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country located at the crossroads of South Asia, the Middle East, and Central Asia...
.
Flight 434 today
Today Flight 434 no longer originates in
ManilaThe City of Manila , or simply Manila or Maynila, is the capital of the Philippines and one of the 17 cities and municipalities that make up Metro Manila. It is located on the eastern shores of Manila Bay, on the western portion of the National Capital Region, in the western side of Luzon...
, but it is still a Cebu-Tokyo flight and uses
Airbus A330The Airbus A330 is a large-capacity, wide-body, twin-engine, medium-to-long-range commercial passenger airliner. Built at Toulouse in France by Airbus, over 600 units have been delivered....
aircraft rather than
Boeing 747The Boeing 747 is a widebody commercial airliner, often referred to by the nickname "Jumbo Jet". It is among the world's most recognizable aircraft, and was the first widebody ever produced...
s.
Philippine AirlinesPhilippine Airlines, Inc. , also known historically as Philippine Air Lines, is the national airline of the Philippines....
still operates a Manila-Tokyo route as flight 432.
The aircraft, at the time having the tail number EI-BWF, was later converted to a cargo configuration Boeing 747-2XBF. It subsequently changed hands several times, always to air cargo companies, and finally placed in storage in 2007.
Flight 434 coverage
In addition to the news broadcasts, the popular National Geographic Channel show
MaydayMayday is a documentary television program produced by Cineflix in Canada. It is aired on Discovery Channel Canada and the National Geographic Channel...
(also known as
Air Crash Investigation and
Air Emergency) aired an episode about Philippine Airlines Flight 434 called "Bomb on Board."
See also
- List of terrorist incidents
- List of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners
- Flying an airplane without control surfaces
- Loss of control
External links