Air India, Irish Sea, June 23, 1985

Sometimes a terrorist attack is the primary cause of commuter accidents. The following accident occurred because of a terrorist attack aboard a commuter vehicle.

On June 23, 1985, Sikh-extremists were aboard an Air India 747 Kanishka Flight 182 vehicle. The Air India aircraft left from Montreal-London-Delhi and was flying over the Atlantic Ocean when all of a sudden a hidden bomb aboard the plane exploded. The plane was flying to Bombay (which is now called Mumbai). The crash killed all 329 people who were on board. Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik were accused of putting the bomb on the doomed plane.

Pan Am Flight 103, Scotland, December 21, 1988

Here is yet another doomed passenger flight that was the result of terrorism that occurred on December 21, 1988 aboard Pan Am Flight 103. Pam Am Flight 103 was flying over Lockerbie, which is in Scotland, during a night trip in which the plane was headed to New York’s JFK airport.

The flight never made it because two terrorists planted a bomb on the aircraft. In this tragedy, 259 passengers lost their lives and 11 people who were on the ground lost their lives as well because of the burning debris that fell to the ground. Two Libyan terrorists were responsible for this attack. Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was convicted, and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah was acquitted of the crime. In 1992, Pan Am was found guilty because of a lack of security screening.

Airbus A300, Strait of Hormuz, Iran, July 3, 1988

Sometimes the cause of one of these unfortunate crashes is not because of faulty equipment or terrorist attacks, but there are cases in which a nation’s military force is the prime cause of some of these tragedies.

Such was the case of Airbus A300. On July 3, 1988, an Airbus A300 aircraft which was operated by Iran Air was traveling to its destination. The plane was suddenly shot down over the Strait of Hormuz. A US Navy destroyer named Vincennes took the aircraft for a hostile enemy and fired two surface-to-air missiles towards the aircraft and shot it down. All 290 people aboard the plane died. The crew of the US destroyer thought the Airbus A300 was an F-14 Tomcat fighter jet.

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