My Grandpa Helped in the Clean up. He was 39 in 1988 and was an architect and Chartered Surveyor. He lived nearby in Dalbeattie and was tasked with checking if homes affected or nearby to the crash were still safe, needed repaired, or destroyed.
My Granny told me that when he came back home for Christmas dinner, he ate it alone in his office and didn't talk to anyone for a while. He doesn't talk about it much, and I've only gotten snippets or stuff I've researched myself
There's a museum in Glasgow called the Riverside Museum, and it's focused on all different types of vehicles, including a tall ship from the 1890s that you can board outside the museum. Upstairs in the museum, there's a small section dedicated to airport security, and inside that section, there's a block of marzipan with a bite taken out of it displayed.
After the Lockerbie bombings, the father of one of the victims had designed a fake explosive out of a car radio and marzipan, with the marzipan meant to look like semtex. The father took this 'bomb' on a flight from London to New York in his hand luggage. Then, he called a press conference, showed the reporters the 'bomb', and took a bite out of the marzipan, to show how bad airport security was at the time, even after Lockerbie.
https://preview.redd.it/tdr8ocxakk8g1.jpeg?width=630&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=00b1be410c32aae7500a3c39f42418bf66bf8771
Even nowadays, stuff like that still happens. A relative of mine once forgot a damn gun in his backpack, and he was able to get through all the security at the airport, board an international flight, go through border control and customs in the EU (where guns are a serious no-no), and only realized the "surprise" he had with him when he started unpacking at the hotel. I still can't believe it.
A friend ended up doing that by accident in japan. As I remember, he asked for someone from the consulate (that they had at the airport or nearby) and they came and he fessed up before he left the airport. Had a lot of questions to answer, but he was free to go with no issues afterwards. About 6 months later he actually got it back as well after they sent it back to him.
I once accidentally brought my weed vape through on a plane to Japan. I realized in flight thankfully so I unscrewed the cartridge and stuffed it into the tissue box in the lav, just keeping the battery in my purse. Figured it would get thrown out whenever the box of tissues got emptied and tossed. Got away with it but the panic part sure wasn't fun! With how strict their laws on weed are, I'm not sure if the gun would be better or worse!
Assuming he was legal to own the gun and able to prove that, he could have contacted authorities and sending it back by courier or putting it in the baggage.
Just don't walk into a police station with a gun in your hand yelling "I've got a gun" :D
Your best bet would be to call your domestic embassy and see if something can be worked out immediately before you leave the airport.
Also, this way they can let the proper transportation authorities know in a very hush hush way.
No. You open yourself up to a lot of a shit. Just being foreign may get you some leniency in court but the police will have to deal with it. You would still the paper work for your home country and the permission to have it in the host country.
Sounds like they did the best thing they could have done
Emm, nope. As far as EU law goes, he was a foreign citizen who was in illegal possession of a firearm after illegally importing it. Foreign laws and permits don’t really matter here. I remember doing a quick bit of research back then, and at best, the police would just confiscate the gun without pressing charges. But that wasn’t a guarantee, since he brought the gun through customs without declaring it... So if he’d done the right thing and called the police, this whole mess most likely wouldn’t have ended in jail time, but it would have been pretty costly.
Yeah, no. The Royal Mail isn’t going to be handling a weapon.
If you’re lucky, the gun will be getting destroyed and you’ll be let go, but more likely it’s getting destroyed and you’re going to be in for some very serious questions.
I don’t think there’s any “legal to own the gun” from the perspective of a foreign government if you’ve already illegally imported a firearm. At the very best they’d take the gun and not charge you with a crime.
He ended up tearing the gun apart and tossing the pieces into different trash dumpsters. Maybe not the smartest move legally, but he didn’t want to find out if the local police would believe that he brought it with him unknowingly and that he wasn’t caught at the security check back at the departure airport by pure luck.
I was drunk. Put a beer in my bag sometime. Walked to TSA Precheck. Bag got through x-ray without me knowing I had the beer still in bag. Got drunker at airport lounge. Met a nice weirdo and hugged him. Got on plane with Mormon colleague. Found the beer! Held it up in the air in triumph! Didn’t buckle my seatbelt. Ordered a whisky! Beer was warm. Didn’t drink beer. Can’t win them all.
When I was a kid flew from Dubai to New York City. Unknown to us there was a full on 6 inch dagger from a gift shop in the plastic bag with snacks and legos to entertain me during the flight. Dubai security did not find it, but New York security did and they were less than thrilled. They were deciding on whether to call the police or not but decided to let us go.
Once had the Allen key I use to adjust my ski boots confiscated at Security in case I tried to take the plane apart. Last week it was a partially eaten container of queso because it was a "cream" and there was more than 100 ml remaining. Both times they missed the machete.
I worked in the automotive parts business in 2001 and had frequent flights between warehouses. After 9-11, shortly after normal flights resumed, I had a week where I flew from Spokane to Seattle to Portland and back to Spokane. After I returned home, I discovered that I was carrying an orange box-cutter knife in my inside jacket pocket. I Went through security in 3 different airports, carrying the same "weapon" used by the highjackers, and nobody ever saw it.
Don’t forgot the reporters from The Onion the managed to sneak explosives on Continental Flight 782 and then detonated it killing everyone onboard. Proving that airport security was still lacking 6 YEARS after 9/11. SMH and RIP…
A decade ago they were missing almost all of the contraband used in tests to evaluate their performance. Guns, bombs, you name it.
I'm having trouble finding more recent reporting on their performance. The new generation of luggage x-ray machines being rolled out are apparently very sophisticated and can reduce the risk of operator error. Certain airports are finally allowing liquids again because the x-ray machine can tell if it's just water and they don't have to assume the person running the machine will screw up.
I was flying internationally with my parents the morning after this happened (US time). Not the most fun I’ve ever had dealing with airports or airlines.
I was on this plane when it flew from Germany to England, always wondered if the bomb was on the plane when I was or if it was loaded on at Heathrow Airport.
The physical plane changed in London although the flight number stayed the same and it was possible to have a through ticket from Frankfurt - Detroit and just switch to the new plane. The plane from Frankfurt-London was a 727
I read it a comment as to whether the bomb was loaded onto the feeder flight and transferred in London or whether the bomb first entered the flight at London.
A great number of people in Scotland have some person in their life connected with the clean up too, even if it's just a work colleague. It had far reaching effects. Absolutely messed up one guy I knew.
Pretty much everyone in Scotland has some person in their life connected with the clean up too, even if it's just a work colleague. It had far reaching effects. Absolutely messed up one guy I knew.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_civil_war_(2011)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_civil_war_(2014%E2%80%932020)
Libya has been through plenty since the fall of Gaddafi.
McVeigh’s [motives](https://www.civil-war.net/why-did-mcveigh-bomb-oklahoma-city/) had nothing to do with whether he was a Christian or not.
So, why did McVeigh bomb Oklahoma City? The answer lies in a complex web of factors, including:
• Anti-Government Sentiments: McVeigh believed that the government was infringing on individual rights and freedoms, particularly in the areas of gun control and taxation. He saw the government as a tyrannical entity that needed to be taken down.
• Racism and White Supremacism: McVeigh was influenced by white supremacist ideologies, which emphasized the need to protect the white race from perceived threats from other races and cultures.
• Fear of a Communist Takeover: McVeigh believed that the government was secretly working to impose a communist regime on the United States, and that the bombing was a necessary step to prevent this.
• Personal Grievances: McVeigh had a personal grievance against the government, stemming from his experiences during the Gulf War. He believed that the government had abandoned its soldiers and failed to provide adequate support.
Which are ultimately tied to an extreme view of Christianity that’s intertwined with the prosperity gospel, white supremacy and AM talk radio - before Joe Rogan and podcast bros, there was Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage.
Still. Christian conservatism and anti-government(as in democracy being destroyed for theocracy/autocracy) go hand in hand. It’s not just the punks who want to the government go away - but they espouse anarchy.
Until Christians go back to being harmless weirdos like Ned Flanders in The Simpsons, I’ll still see them and Islamists in the same eye.
No, you’re making shit up. Only Mooselimbs are promised paradise for murder. All other major religions have murder on the “do not get into paradise” list.
Okay you’ve found 3 examples of Christian anti government behavior. Would you like to see the Wikipedia page on ~just~ Palestinian related plane hijackings? It’s separate into each decade because of how many there are. Stop pretending these things are the same.
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You're right in this day and age, not so much if you look at history. Christians have been brutal as well in the past. Religion can be cancerous in many shapes and forms.
You really can't compare that. How many terrorist attacks, especially plane bombings, have been carried out by conservative, American-style Christians in the name of their religion? And if we start counting the number of victims killed by radical Islam followers in recent times, then anything Christians have done in the name of Christianity would seem like not even a fraction, but more like a rounding error.
George W Bush said [god told him to go to Iraq.](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa) That decision resulted in anywhere from 500000 to 1000000 deaths (no firm count exists to this day). Anything radical islamists have done over the last 100 years pales in comparison to that one war alone. That they came up with the WMD excuse doesn't not make it a war fuelled by christian fanaticism if the main architect of the war is taking orders from the voices in his head.,
This is a textbook case of bad metrics producing bad conclusions.
You’re taking one tactic, plane bombings, in one narrow time window and treating it as a proxy for total religious violence. Why would that ever be a valid measure? By that logic, would you argue knives are harmless simply because most murders today involve guns?
You’re also ignoring the variables that actually matter. Extremist violence tracks power, access, and historical context, not theology. When Christian movements have had state backing or military reach, why do the body counts suddenly scale? And when they don’t, why do they drop?
Same pattern, different inputs.
If your conclusion only holds after you shrink the dataset until one side “wins,” what exactly are you proving, other than your own selection bias?
They've never done it for the "atheist cause" while following a canonical atheist text (doesn't exist), so I don't see the relevance of specifying that they're atheists. There's no such thing as atheist jihad.
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It’s called being a narcissistic ideologue…you don’t think of others.
They don’t *think or believe what you do: therefore they're* **wrong** and deserve to die….
It’s basically what unites *islamists* and what makes them far more dangerous than lone psychopaths who feel wronged on an individual level.
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While we're on the subject of missleading titles: "all 11 people on the ground died", Scotland recovered well from having its entire population wipes out.
This could have all been prevented had Air India Flight 182 been taken more seriously. It blew up three years before in nearly the exact same way as Pam Am 103 and killed even more people. Yet it was widely ignored by the Canadian government as an "Indian tragedy" despite nearly all the passenger on board being Canadian citizens.
Pre 9/11 there was the [1994 Air France Flight8969 ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_8969) from Algeria to France. The plane was hijacked on the ground in Algeria and their plan was to fly close enough to the Eiffel Tower so that the highjackers could just steer the plane into the tower. None of the terrorists knew how fly and but the 9/11 plan saw to it that didn't happen again. The airlines and their security have always been driven by economics and the illusion of safety. This still rings true with the TSA. Anybody that's flown EL AL knows what real airline security looks like.
And not just El Al - any flight into Israel also sees enhanced security but El Al from what I read is almost at the level of Con Air minus being restrained and air marshals watching every move.
HaHa! It's not as obvious from other countries but El Al has layers in Ben Gurion. That said, I spent many years working in West Africa. Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Coted'Ivoire and Air France had started some serious security post 9/11. They would fly to these countries openly but would bring their own security forces on the plane. About 6 to 10 big dudes that would unload tables, wands, explosive swab machines and every passenger that got off the bus post local airport security check in the terminal got a very thorough pat down on the tarmac. Air France wisely hired Commandement des Opérations Spéciales retired to be security. I definitely saw people turned away. TODAY Air France doesn't fly to half these countries because even with that layer of security they might be shot down in the air.
Yea, someone on a sub posted a pic from JFK/EWR - it was a sign United put up for passengers going to TLV that there will be enhanced security - and you must be in that area of the terminal.
El Al might be the only civilian airline with military-level countermeasures to prevent missile attacks in the air besides their ground-side security and having IDF marshals board the plane.
If they were "old stock" Canadians, you can bet there would've been a stronger reaction from the government and the general public. There's also Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 which was shot down by a missile in 2020 after taking off from Tehran. 55 Canadians and 30 permanent residents died on that flight but barely anyone knows or talks about it. You can guess the backgrounds of those Canadians and permanent residents.
CSIS was actually involved and wiretapping many of the terrorists involved, but had a hard time getting the RCMP and other government bodies to take the threats and evidence of preparation they had seriously, to tragic effect.
Tragically, there actually WAS increased security on Air India planes specifically, and Air India had staff specifically in Canada to monitor threats, but the x-ray machine was out at Toronto (Vancouver didn't have one) and the portable handheld chemical detector was activated by the bomb in Toronto but gave a much milder noise than security were shown in training and it was thought to be a false positive. Horrifying to think had they simply checked, this wouldn't have happened. Had the X-ray machine not been under maintenance, it may not have happened.
That being said, the bombing was widely reported worldwide. PANAM and other airlines and airports cpuld have taken the very real threat of bombs more seriously, and shouldn't have needed criminal convictions or a report to do so, but nothing was done to prevent it happening again.
I just read the story about this because of your comment. What a preventable tragedy. Air India 182 was preventable, and the fact that it happened validates your point that 103 was also avoidable.
Disaster Breakdown also has an excellent video about the topic. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2ZwvOTjr7M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2ZwvOTjr7M)
Didn’t a Philippine Airlines flight to Japan also have an explosion from a bomb planted by an Islamist group in Manila? While the Philippines is an overwhelmingly Catholic in the major metros, there’s big Islamic faction in Mindanao.
And Air India was "lucky only one" of their aircraft got bombed that day. The other bomb planned to detonate on a flight Inbound from the Pacific detonated while transferring it in Tokyo.
Its infuriating how lessons from the flight 182 tragedy got overlooked...and more infuriating that fundamentalists from ANY religion can still get away for murder, because their religion is the only true one and everyone else should be taught through violence.
This. The modus operandi was almost the same . But it was ignored because it was not exactly a western tragedy. If things were made more stricter after air india lockerbie could have been prevented.
A suspicious amount of UN and FBI personnel were scheduled to be on the flight and rebooked to different airlines as there were rumours about Pan Am being a target going around.
This actually led to a change in US policy that they now must make public if there is a known and actionable threat — the “no double standard” policy, which prohibits “selective notification of a threat to civil aviation” to only selected potential travelers. Now codified in the State Department’s 7 FAM 050, the policy has become the standard guide for public information for both government and many private businesses
Mine went on its own a few weeks back. My flight was delayed but for some reason my bag got loaded onto another flight going to the same place.
At the time I thought it wasn’t supposed to happen but maybe the rules have been relaxed now.
Ok. Interesting to know. I was a bit worried as I was tracking the air tag across the country. Hoped my bag would be there when I arrived 4 hours later.
Like 20 years ago I would understand it, because probably no one would use hand held terminals to scan the bags before entering the aircraft, but 10 years ago they were starting to be used, and they are linked with the gate, so if a pax doesn't board, it will send a message that the tag number Xxxxx Is not ok to board. So you either go and remove from aircraft or don't board at all. Usually the stand by passengers, their bag, when scanned it will give you a message of not ok to load, until you are accepted at the gate, only then when you scan it, it will say ok to load.
Yes that’s what I thought. I’ve been there where we’ve had to wait for someone’s bags to be unloaded because they didn’t make it to the gate.
Wierd thing is it was the flight before mine, the mine was delayed for maintenance issues.
Then I got a text saying my bag had gone early, please go and find it in the baggage hall.
It definitely happened to me more than once in the 2000s, but I was flying as a standby passenger so it was probably easy to miscommunicate. I vividly remember being at LAX one day and seeing my bag going being loaded while I wasn't getting on the plane.
>And since then, baggage was not allowed to fly without the owner,
My and my wife bags got flown from Heathrow to Madrid in November 2024. I checked in, went through security and then we both fell asleep, missing my flight.
Was genuinely amazed my bag wasn't taken off the plane, what I did should have looked dodgy as fuck to British Airways. My wife even has an Arabic name...
I saw [this documentary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYTnZxUYYx8&t=1428s) about it a few years back, and it really stuck with me. It included maps of the neighborhood that were destroyed by the crash, seating assignments of the people on board the plane, and interviews with the families of the victims.
Probably the most devastating part of the documentary is when they go from interviewing the mother of a college student who had been on that flight to footage of her at the airport that day laying on the ground wailing "My Baby! My Baby!".
I’m a Syracuse University grad and 35 Syracuse students, I believe including the one you mentioned, were on the plane coming home from a semester abroad. Every year the school holds a memorial for the students.
There's a nice memorial on campus too. I try to stop there to sit for a while every time I'm passing through Syracuse. I was there on the exchange program that year too. I flew home on a different flight.
I also went to Syracuse one of my close friends was a [Remembrance Scholar](https://nationalscholarships.syr.edu/become-a-remembrance-scholar/). Learned a lot from her and the program.
> The 35 rising seniors selected annually are each awarded a $5,000 Remembrance Scholarship and are charged with helping to educate the SU campus community about the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. Scholars are expected to undertake meaningful service and to promote initiatives to combat hatred and extremism. Through education, all 270 lost in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 are remembered and honored.
One of the most tragic stories of Lockerbie is Steven Flannigan. He was 14 and lived in Lockerbie, and only survived because he had taken his sister’s Christmas present - a bike - to be checked over by a neighbour.
His house was destroyed, and his parents and sister killed. 5 years later, his older brother (who was in Blackpool at the time of the bombing) also died.
Despite meeting someone and having a son, Steven took his own life in 2000.
Utterly tragic.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/aug/27/lockerbie.ameliahill
I'm weirdly reminded of this quote:
"The moral of this story is that no matter how much we try, no matter how much we want it... some stories just don't have a happy ending." --John Picoult.
> Steven took his own life in 2000.
It's important to state that the official verdict was [accidental death](https://web.archive.org/web/20101002001350/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1371726/Lockerbie-orphan-hit-by-train-had-drunk-14-pints.html).
The inquest was told that Steven regularly fell asleep in 'odd places' after he had been drinking heavily. He was hit two hours after leaving the pub, close to his home, and after hearing the evidence it was deemed most probable that he had slipped/stumbled on the railway bank and - as he often did - [fallen asleep](https://www.gazetteandherald.co.uk/news/7394436.rail-death-brings-the-final-tragedy/).
>37 years ago today, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded...
Thats a horrible way to put it for the victims of this islamic terrorist attack. Not only was everyone aboard killed, but 11 people were also killed by debris.
There was a very good dramatised miniseries done by the BBC surrounding the investigation into the disaster earlier this year - definitely worth a watch.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt13592494/?ref_=ttep_ov_bk
Is this the one where one of the dads of someone who died onboard made a fake bomb to prove how easy it was to get something onboard through airport security? maybe I’m thinking of something else.
There was also Lockerbie: A Search For Truth starring Colin Firth, which was also excellent. I haven't seen the BBC miniseries but that's definitely something I'd be interested in watching.
This story has always fascinated me ever since I heard about it as a 12-year-old.
It takes a special kind of heartlessness to want to do this sort of thing. Right around Christmas time, no less.
Yeah right?
I didn't know anything about it and I thought it had some kind of issue mid flight.
The truth is way harder to accept and makes me belly aching.
Apart from the rebuilt fuselage section which is still held at Farnborough, the remainder of the wreckage is still in a scrapyard in Lincolnshire not far from where I live. Always a strange feeling passing knowing it’s there.
Wikipedia actually says they assume multiple people may have survived the crash inititally and at least two people might have survived with immediate medical care too
Asked my agent to put me on that plane instead of CDG-IAD because I wanted to buy good scotch for my dad in London. Told the fam the London-NYC flight information, but didn’t update them when the ticket actually arrived from CDG to NY.
My carry on was opened three separate times (carrying a Sony IQF2010 SW radio) — most I was ever searched even after 911.
Got to Chicago and saw a flight crashed over Scotland, but it didn’t click (why would a London to NY flight go over Scotland??) …. Until many hours later when they report the flight number.
Called home …. They thought i was on the plane that crashed (I told them it was my plane) and PanAm basically wouldn’t tell them anything.
Tomorrow ain’t promised.
You are exactly right on the flat vs globe distinction. But do me a favor and google London to NYC flight paths and report back what you see. I look at the globe version and see around 13 different paths with exactly zero going Scotland.
Anyhow, I’m happy my agent “fucked up” and didn’t get my flight through Heathrow.
In retrospect, seems like they knew a bomb would be in an electronic device like a radio since it was examined three separate times. “Turn it on, change the station”. I had 7-8 bottles on wine wrapped in socks and they made me open them all. Remember, back then you could bring lighters on board and smoke on the plane (in the smoking section) and bring bottles of wine on your carry on (I didn’t because my radio was kinda big).
Even so, the direct great circle route from London to New York should pass over mid-Wales and the middle of the island of Ireland, and should not go anywhere near Scotland. This isn't a flat map vs globe issue.
It only went over Scotland due to ATC routing.
Sad thing was Pan Am was in financial trouble due to mismanagement of airline, acquiring National Airlines for domestic routes (unfortunately Pan Am inherited more debt), and a big what if scenario if 103 never happened the airline would’ve fallen & bankruptcy in 1991.
At the time of Pan Am 103 the airline had actually clawed its way into modest profitability. The company was a shell of its former self and I doubt they would have survived long term but the bombing definitely accelerated their final collapse.
Its pretty unclear that the guy that was convicted was even guilty - the family action group of the UK citizens killed dont believe the right people were guilty
I've heard that claim a few times as well. The compassionate release thing was just a cover to let him go because the case would have collapsed on appeal. Don't know how true that theory is but if it's true it's still outrageous. If the conviction is unsound then man up and admit it.
An interesting note about one of the victims of this act of terrorism is an AIDS researcher named Dr. Irving Sigal. Sigal had a really unique idea about stoping the HIV virus from destroying a person's immune system. He was the father of what we now know as protease inhibitors. His death is thought to have set back AIDS research for years. YEARS.
[https://www.pa103ll.org/living-memorial/irving-sigal](https://www.pa103ll.org/living-memorial/irving-sigal)
A number of HIV/AIDS researchers were murdered on MH 17 as well, they were coming back from a conference.
https://abc7chicago.com/post/aids-researchers-mourn-loss-of-colleagues-in-malaysia-airlines-crash/199018/
And on SwissAir 111 HIV/AIDS experts and epidemiologists Jonathan Mann and Mary Lou Clements-Mann were killed.
I remember this though, it's mentioned in many medical histories of the HIV/AIDS epidemic because of the impact.
This photo is like a core memory of mine- I didn't have a personal connection to the flight, but as a young child at the time who was fascinated by aviation. I remember how it made feel, that it looked so bizarre, and just *wrong,* like a disembodied head.
I was on an LHR to JFK flight that night on a different carrier.
My coworkers and I were unaware of what had happened to Flight 103 when we got to LHR, having wrapped up a successful business trip, we were all in good spirits, laughing and joking around with each other.
When we got to the gate, I noticed that everyone around us were very somber, and I saw a couple people crying and sobbing, but I didn't think much of it and kept carrying on with each other. (ignorance is bliss)
Once we were onboard and seated, you could cut the tension with a butter knife.
I asked a fellow passenger what was going on and they told me what happened.
Our flight track was the same as Flight 103.
When we were coming up on Scotland, the captain asked that we lower the window shades out of respect.
It was the most eerie flights I have ever taken.
its wild they knew the syrians and iranians did this but blamed it on libya because gaddafi was a great scapegoat that wouldnt affect the gulf war mobilisation negatively
you should watch Hypernormalisation by adam curtis you uneducated simpleton
"In line with this, all terrorism in the Middle East was blamed on him. Despite the fact that a number of spies, intelligence agents and journalists thought Syria was responsible for the Lockerbie terrorist attack in December 1990 the experts switched their opinion and said it was Gaddafi. Sanctions were imposed on Libya and the country was banished as a rogue state." [source](https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20170331-adam-curtis-gaddafis-story-holds-up-a-mirror-to-western-hypocrisy/)[here](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr7T07WfIhM)
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The title is wrong, the plane did not explode, the aircraft was fine. A bomb, placed onboard the plane exploded, which brought the plane down onto the town of Lockerbie.
Explosive decompression doesn't always result in catastrophic structural failure of an aircraft. There are so so many factors, one of the most important being the location of the explosive device.
In simple terms , The fuselage is built in small square sections so that if there is an explosive decompression, only one part will break off. However, if it is a bomb, it would send shrapnel in different directions and cause explosive decompression in multiple parts of the fuselage at the same time , leading to a massive explosive breakup.
This was one of the first news stories that I remember. My family and I had travelled down to Lockerbie the week before visiting friends of my parents. I never watched the news when my parents were watching it, as I was only 6 when this happened, but I definitely sat down and watched the footage and news reports of this.
I was supposed to be on that flight. I was flying Oslo-London -NY, decided to go Oslo-Amsterdam-London-NY, stopped in Amsterdam for the night to buy hash to bring home, saved my life-
I happened to be driving with my fiancee north up the A74 past the crash site only a few minutes after the pieces came down. The A74 was closed and we took a different route.
Has there ever been consensus on who planted the bomb?
My wife and I flew from the UK to the US on the same Pan Am flight ~2 weeks before the bombing. I still remember how horrible we felt after hearing about the attack.
I was in the US Army, stationed in Wiesbaden, Germany. My direct supervisor, SFC Willis L. Coursey, was on the plane. He had just six short months until retirement. He was just going home for a quick Christmas visit with his wife and kids. Worst part of the whole thing was, I took him to the airport as he did not have a car. I'm still crushed. He was an awesome NCO. I still have his patch. This man took great care of me at a time when I worked for some real douche bags, and I'm happy to name them too; CPT Dennis Ray Payne and 1SG George Roberts. Willis Coursey was 10x the soldier as these other two put together!
Yes, crew and several passengers still in their seats. I think that's where the flight attendant who [survived](https://confessionsofatrolleydolly.com/2025/12/21/https-confessionsofatrolleydolly-com-2018-12-21-the-crew-of-pan-am-flight-103/) the disaster was found, too - she died shortly after being found.
It was believed by some that several people may have survived the fall, and then died from exposure/injuries. A decade later this [BBC](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/267865.stm) report says a pathologist found two people who could have survived.
I live in Cork, Ireland. Will never forget that day. Was watching a golf tournament when there was a news flash. Memorial to the victims in Ahakatisa, west cork. https://roaringwaterjournal.com/tag/ahakista/
I’m old enough to remember this. I remember the foggy aerial footage of Lockerbie and the carnage there. It was on the news for many days here in Denmark. It’s the first time I learned there was something called terrorism.
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[This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSKotRGwGvc) was the first I heard of it. Everything was so different back then, no 24/7 news, no social media for instant updates. There were some further updates during the evening but mainly during programme breaks until the main news shows.
I found out the next morning, a horrible , wet dark December morning, my mate picked me up for work and it was on the radio in the car , I had gone to bed early the night before.
It was on my birthday. I went 22 that day. I remember when I came home from the airport in Helsinki. My girlfriend told me that a 747 had crashed near the Scottish border. I immediately started thinking about reasons for the accident. Already the same night I started thinking about a bomb. I can't remember if I sometimes traveled on the Clipper Made of the Seas. Pan Am was a fantastic airline back in the days.
I had a special lecture at university from one of the detectives who worked on the investigation. That 3 hours gave me the best lecture I got over my entire 5 years.
Some of my course didn’t go because they didn’t see the point of it since it was just a guest speaker, but it was an incredible insight into how everything played out afterwards and I’d have hated to have missed it, absolutely unreal to see how it all went
This is one of the saddest pictures of an accident aftermath. All the flight deck crew members were found still strap in their seats. Just behind those flight deck windows…RIP Captain MacQuarrie, First Officer Wagner, and Second Officer Avritt.
I was in the US Army, stationed in Germany at the time. A friend of mine's wife was going home for Christmas to show off their newborn little girl.
My friend had duty that night and for the next couple of days, so his wife was going on ahead a few days before him so he asked me to drive her to the airport, which of course I said I would. On the way up the A6, my alternator went out and the car just quit so we pulled to the side.
Her ticket was for Flight 103.
Nope. We never made it to the airport, thankfully. They caught a flight the next week together after he was off duty and had went home on leave to show off that new baby.
I was watching a Mayday episode about that and Air India 182 a few days ago. Both led to air security reform but TBH, I don’t trust the TSA either. There have been explosion resistant composite LD3s for planes one of the episodes mentioned but they’re expensive and don’t tolerate abuse at the hands of cargo loaders.
I was gonna do this as one of the "Today in Aviation History" posts that I often do. However, not only did I figure someone else would beat me to it (they did), but I also felt a bit burnt out from making them every day for about a week there. So, I figured I would take a break today and let someone else do it.
I was living on a US military base in Germany. When we got back to school to talk about our Christmas break, one of our teachers listened to us patiently then told us how he had had to change his plane tickets home to the States at the last minute, and his original tickets had been on the Lockerbie flight. He beat all of us with his story
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