Pan Am Flight 103 (1988)

Pan Am Flight 103 was Pan American World Airways's third daily scheduled transatlantic flight from London's Heathrow International Airport to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. The event took place when the aircraft was overflying Lockerbie, a town located south of Scotland on Wednesday 21 December 1988, a bomb inside the plane exploded, killing all 243 passengers, 16 crew members and large sections of the plane that felt in Lockerbie killed 11 people. The bomb was located in the airplane´s cargo section and the explotion made a hole into the fuselage, and due to the difference of pression in the inside and outside of the plane and velocity the fuselage fell apart very fast. Investigation on the case leaded that the bomb was contained on a suitcase, and it belonged two Lybians, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah. Libya has never formally admitted carrying out the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. In a letter to the United Nations it "accepted responsibility for the actions of its officials".The motive that is generally attributed to Libya can be traced back to a series of military confrontations with the US Navy that took place in the 1980s in the Gulf of Sidra, the whole of which Libya claimed as its territorial waters.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103

By: Alan Mar