Hijacked: Flight 73 review

Could I be as brave and quick-thinking as the recently hired, all-Indian cabin crew, hiding passports from the American passengers to protect their being targets?

Would I be as honest as the British man, relieved he’s not American, wrongly believing himself to be less in danger? How would I cope as an unaccompanied minor, returning to parents after a summer away, confused when thrust alone into a life-or-death situation?

Then there are the little details that bring home the surrealism of the atrocity. The boredom of hours spent waiting on the precipice as the terrorists try to negotiate a new flight crew after the pilots escaped. The maddening loop of pre-flight muzak.

An airline hostess was even asked to a disco by one of the terrorists.
The wider political circumstances are also explored.

We are told that the Palestinians received backing from Gaddafi’s regime. The Pakistani authorities are called out as incompetent liars for their part t in how the siege ended, and for releasing the surviving terrorists early into their sentences so that two remain at large today.

With the original plan being to fill the plane with fuel and fly it over Israel to destroy a target, the case is made for this as a potential forerunner for 9/11.

But at the end of the day, it comes down to four men not seeing other people as human beings, but as pawns to be sacrificed for their cause.

And, of course, while we get to hear what was going in the the minds of the survivors, with the British man even reaching for understanding, we cannot peer into the heads and hearts of the 22 passengers so callously and needlessly murdered.