Lufthansa Flight 649 [SEP] end time
Lufthansa Flight 649
The hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 649 was an act of terrorism committed by a Palestinian group that took place between 22 and 23 February 1972. Eventually, all hostages on board the seized Boeing 747-200 were released when the West German government paid a ransom of US$5 million.
Hijacking.
Flight 649 was a scheduled Lufthansa service on the Tokyo-Hong Kong-Bangkok-Delhi-Athens-Frankfurt route, which was operated once a week, leaving Tokyo-Haneda Airport on Monday afternoons and
Lufthansa crew members remained as hostages inside the jumbo jet, and were eventually released in the evening.
Though it was planned to keep the exact amount of money secret in order to not attract copycats, the sum was disclosed to the public on 25 February by Georg Leber, then Federal Minister for Transport. According to a spokesman of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), at that time this marked the biggest ransom ever paid for an aircraft.
Aftermath and political background.
Once all hostages of Flight 649