PAN AM FLIGHT 103
On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 259 people on board. Large sections of the aircraft crashed onto a residential street in Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 11 people on the ground. The aircraft involved was a Boeing 747-121, registered as N739PA. The pilot-in-command on the flight 103 was captain James B. MacQuarrie, who had over 11 000 hours of total flying time. The first officer was Raymond R. Wagner, with approximately 5 500 total flight hours to his credit, and the flight engineer was Jerry D. Avritt, who had more than 8 000 hours of flying experience.
The Flight 103 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Frankfurt Airport, West Germany to Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, Michigan, United States, with intermediate stops at London Heathrow Airport, United Kingdom and John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York, United States. The Flight 103 originated as a feeder flight from Frankfurt Airport to London Heathrow Airport, using a Boeing 727. Pan Am routinely changed the type of aircraft operating different legs of a flight. In London, a scheduled change of aircraft took place, and the passengers and luggage from the feeder flight were transferred directly to Boeing 747, which was operating the transatlantic leg of the route. The Semtex bomb which caused the explosion had probably been hidden in a radio cassette player and was transferred from a Pan Am feeding flight, arriving from Frankfurt.
Flight 103 departed London Heathrow Airport at 18:25. At 18:58, the flight crew established two-way radio contact with Shanwick Oceanic Area Control in Prestwick. At 19:02:44, the clearance delivery officer at Shanwick transmitted an oceanic clearance for the Flight 103. The flight crew did not acknowledge this message. At that time an explosion occurred in the aircraft's forward cargo hold. The explosive forces produced a large hole in the fuselage structure and disrupted the main cabin floor. Major cracks continued to propagate from the large hole while containers and items of cargo ejected through the hole. The forward fuselage and flight deck area separated when the aircraft was in a nose down and left roll attitude, peeling away to the right. The main wing structure struck the ground with a high yaw angle at Sherwood Crescent, Lockerbie, creating a large impact crater and causing a massive fire.
All 243 passengers and 16 crew members were killed, as were 11 residents of Lockerbie on the ground. Of the 270 total fatalities, 190 were American citizens and 43 British citizens. Nineteen other nationalities were represented, with four or fewer passengers per country.
NOTABLE AVIATION ACCIDENTS AND INCIDENTS