FAQ

yes, its based on the TWA Flight 847 was an international Trans World Airlines flight which was hijacked by Lebanese Shia Extremists, later identified as members of Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, on Friday morning, June 14, 1985, after originally taking off from Cairo, Egypt. The flight was en route from Athens, Greece to Rome, Italy, from where it was scheduled to travel on to London. The aircraft with its passengers and crew endured a three-day intercontinental ordeal during which passengers were threatened and some beaten. Passengers with Jewish-sounding names were moved apart from the others, and another passenger, U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem, was tortured and murdered, his body unceremoniously thrown onto the tarmac. Dozens of passengers were held hostage over the next two weeks, until released by their captors after some of their demands were met.

The initial demands of the hijackers included:

the release of the "Kuwait 17," those involved in the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Kuwait. the release of all 766 mainly Lebanese Shias transferred to Israel in conjunction with Israel's immediate withdrawal from Lebanon;(a pullout had been underway since January and was already virtually complete) international condemnation of Israel and the United States. and condemnation of the March 8, 1985, car bombing in the Beirut suburb of Bir al Abed earlier that year.The Greek government released the accomplice Ali Atwa and in exchange the hijackers released eight Greek citizens, including Greek pop singer Demis Roussos.

The iconic image of this hijacking was a photograph showing a gun being held to the pilot's head (sticking out of the cockpit window) as the pilot is being questioned by reporters, but it was actually an unloaded gun held by a teenaged security guard who wanted to be on television.

Flight attendant Uli Derickson was widely credited with calming the hijackers and saving the lives of many passengers. Because her German was the only common language with the hijackers, who spoke poor English, she acted as translator and liaison for most of the ordeal.Notably, she defused a tense situation in Algiers when airport officials refused to refuel the plane without payment by offering her own Shell Oil credit card, which was used to charge about $5,500 for 6,000 gallons of jet fuel, for which she later was reimbursed.She also hid the passports of Jewish passengers so they could not be singled out.