Into the Lion's den.
Right from the beginning I had felt nothing but a cold and bitter anger that my command had been threatened. I was concerned for one thing only and that was for my passengers. I had no wish to be embroiled in the bitter battle between The State of Israel and the Arabs who were bent upon it's destruction. I am British and despite my Jewish background ,had no connections or feelings whatsoever for Israel. I had no previous dealings with any Israelis and had only been to Tel Aviv once or twice before. Like any Airline Pilot, my responsibility was to my passengers and to Sabena , my employers. I was, from the start , determined that I was going to do everything within my power to stop the hijackers from succeeding and even if the positions were reversed and it had been Israeli hijackers, I would have acted in exactly the same way, whatever the nationality, religion, creed , faith,or what have you of them. I knew, within me, that however long the ordeal lasted that I would be in better shape than they. There were signs already that the two men were taking some sort of stimulants. Their erratic behaviour was a clue to this. Nevertheless the pistol, a Smith and Wesson , never left the hand of the leader and the other one remained an aggressive dangerous young man.
We were, of course, now on the aircraft's batteries and these would not last very long. The Tower asked for permission to connect an external generator for electricity and air conditioning but , fortunately , the leader refused to allow this. I say fortunately because I knew that the heat of the following day would cause great discomfort and perhaps I would be allowed to open some of the emergency exits and doors. This would have the twofold purpose of forcing them to to mount a guard over each exit thus splitting them up and also to possibly allow passengers to escape through them if the occasion arose. I must confess that the thought of an armed attack coming from the Israeli's had not then crossed my mind.
Unknown to any of us in the stationary plane a squad of Israeli commando's had been in position underneath the plane from the moment that it had stopped. There was a moment,soon after stopping, when the plane shook and moved and I explained to the very alarmed hijackers that we had probably stressed tyres on landing and had overheated the brakes causing the tyres to burst . Little did I know that the commando's had deflated the main gear and had cut the hydraulic lines making taxying impossible.
Occasionally , while speaking to the Tower, the microphone would be grabbed from me and the leader would speak in Arabic to the Tower in a very rapid, threatening manner. I had been forced to show the leader how to use the microphone but when I was speaking I was able to convey one or two things by judicious choice of words and sentences. For instance by stressing and repeating the word "For" in sentences I was able to indicate how many of the hijackers were on board. They made a lot of demands as to whether the Red Cross representative had been called and were told by the Israeli's that he had been notified but that he was coming from Jerusalem and it would take time to get there.
I didn't sleep at all during the night but my First Officer who had behaved impeccably througout and was very calm managed to and I envied his attitude. The two men took it in turns to keep the vigil in the cockpit and the two girls made single visits to the cockpit from time to time and received terse Arabic instructions from the eldest man. I had made it quite clear to them that I was going to speak to the passengers from time to time and I did so. I always reassured them that everything possible was being done to resolve the situation and counselled them to keep calm and not to try to intervene in any way. I did this in as calm a voice as I possibly could but it was very difficult as I was watched like a hawk each time that I spoke.
No catering was put on board although the Israeli's had been perfectly willing to do so. The Leader refused and I was very pleased that he had done so as I reasoned that the men themselves would become more and more fatigued if there was very little food or liquid on board.. It was, of course, very hard on the passengers as the provisions that had been put on board at Brussels were running very low and drinks had to be rationed. There were ninety nine passengers on board, the majority of them elderly people. There were several Nuns and a Greek Orthodox priest who came in for a two day prolonged interrogation by the Israeli's afterwards.. There had been no panic. People seemed numbed by the situation. There was only one child, travelling alone but accompanied by a Sabena stewardess who was travelling as a passenger. My Wife took the nine year old girl under her wing and sat her next to her. She turned out to be "an enfant terrible" and refused to share any of the large amount of sweets and goodies that her parents had given her for the trip. A very sinister aspect of the situation was when the men demanded the Passports of the passengers and segregated the Jewish names from the others. My Wife point blankly refused to surrender hers saying "I am British" and they let her sit on the port side of the aircraft just by the main entrance door..... More very soon. Reg