I SURVIVED THE BOMBING OF A PLANE
I SURVIVED THE BOMBING OF A PLANE
Description
In 1986 Christos Christofis is on a the last leg of a flight from Los Angeles to Athens, when a bomb explodes just six seats in front of him.
Tags
Credits
Field Reporter
- Spyros Mantzabinos
Interviewee
- Xristos Xristofhs
Podcast Producer
- Stayros Blaxos
Sound Designer
- Iasonas THeofanou
Sound Editor
- Mixalhs Oikonomidhs
Video Director
- Dafnh Matziarakh
Music
- William Ryan Fritch
We go back to ‘86. Several years ago. I was thirty-seven years old then. I was working for a shipping company as chief engineer, based in Piraeus. I therefore often had to travel abroad.
During such a trip in April 1986, I was leaving New York to return to Athens, and my flight was through Rome. The TWA flight, 840 then, had started out from Los Angeles, had taken passengers in New York, its destination was Rome, Athens, and Cairo.
The flight was going fine. Around fifteen to twenty minutes before landing in Athens, a terrifying noise sounded, an explosion, inside the airplane.
Where I was sitting, a huge hole opened on the right side of the airplane, with a diameter of around two meters, and I saw it in front of me, because I was a few seats, I suppose six or seven seats further back.
An air current was created pulling from the inside outwards. And we could see in there, apart from the opening, I mean, on the right side of the plane, the interior, the insulation of the airplane that had opened up, had fallen out of there. And shortly after that the oxygen masks dropped. At least two rows of seats were essentially sucked out, like somebody sucked them from the outside.
The airplane was somewhere above Argos, in that region. So, the people who were pulled outside, they fell and were later found in fields in the region, over Argos.
At some point we heard our pilot tell us that the problem was under control. And we calmed down a bit.
What I thought of course, what I immediately believed in my mind, that this is it, we are lost. There was no chance of surviving. And my thought then, the first thought, was to lower the table on the back of my front seat, and calmly write a letter to my family. I mean, I said goodbye to them.
I told them: “Now that everything is ending, I am thinking of you, be well. You will be alright, and I love you and I kiss you.” And I thought that maybe this part would come out, would be saved, and it will be, they will remember, my folks will realize that at least at that moment I was thinking of them, that my thoughts were with them and nothing else.
After that, when the first five minutes passed, we calmed down a bit more - I am speaking of myself - because we were flying normally. It seems that the pilot was experienced. He proved to be an excellent pilot and very cool-headed. He must have been very cool-headed judging from the result. He got the rest of us down alive at the airport.
A bomb had been planted on the flight, as they found out afterwards. In the luggage compartment probably, that is what they said later, right under the seats.
The years went by, and I now laugh sometimes when I think about it, I don't think about it often. I don't think about it, nor does my family ask me about it too often. These things happen, you live through them, they stick with you and then they pass, it seems like.