The Courage Of Flight Attendant Neerja Bhanot
Sonam Kapoor/InstagramNeerja Bhanot had a thriving career as a model before becoming a heroic attendant aboard Pan Am Flight 73.
When four armed Palestinian terrorists commandeered Pan Am Flight 73 in Karachi, Pakistan, on Sept. 5, 1986, Neerja Bhanot carefully managed her overwhelming fear and focused on saving lives. A Pan American World Airways flight attendant, she was responsible for rescuing the pilots and hundreds of passengers — only to be killed after 17 hours of terror.
Born on Sept. 7, 1963, in Chandigarh, India, Neerja Bhanot began her career as a model. Discovered while enrolled at St. Xavier’s College, her face adorned products like Vaporex and storefronts like Paville. When her arranged marriage to a man from the United Arab Emirates crumbled in divorce in 1985, Bhanot took to the skies.
Chosen out of 10,000 applicants to become a new Pan American air hostess, Bhanot had only worked for one year before Palestine’s Abu Nadal organization hijacked the plane. Four members boarded the plane to reroute it to Cyprus and Israel to free their imprisoned peers.
They crossed the Karachi Airport tarmac dressed as security in a van fitted with sirens. After the hijackers boarded the plane and fired warning shots, Bhanot shouted the code for “hijacking” over the intercom for her colleague to relay to the air traffic control tower. This helped officials ground the plane while the pilots escaped from a cockpit hatch.
Unfortunately, the hijackers began executing passengers when their demands for replacement pilots were strategically delayed and silently rejected. Twenty-nine-year-old Rajesh Kumar was shot in the head in full view of authorities and dumped onto the tarmac — before the men began collecting passengers’ passports.
Aware that Westerners would be singled out for execution, Bhanot helped throw their passengers in the trash and hide them under seat cushions. She handed out sandwiches and water to keep the hostages calm. When the military cut the plane’s power after 17 long hours, the terrorists opened fire — intending to kill all aboard.
Bhanot bravely reacted by opening emergency exits to help passengers down the slide. She was tragically shot while protecting three children from gunfire. The following year, the Indian government awarded her the Ashoka Chakra, the country’s highest military honor for valor during peacetime, making her the first woman to receive the award.
In 2004, the Indian Postal Service commemorated Bhanot with a stamp, and her courage has since been dramatized in a 2016 thriller titled Neerja.
