Pan Am 747 'N739PA' , 'Clipper Maid of the Seas'
Album : London Heathrow pre digital, B747.
The ill fated Pan Am 747 N739PA 'Clipper Maid of the Seas' at Heathrow. Sadly a little over four months later this airliner met a tragic end with the loss of 243 passengers, 16 crew and 11 people on the ground whilst operating flight PA103 from London Heathrow to its intended destination of New York JFK.
N739PA on December 21st 1988 departed London-Heathrow runway 27R for New York at 18:25. At 19:03 'Shanwick' transmitted an oceanic clearance. At that time an explosion occurred in the aircraft's forward cargo hold at position 4L. The explosive forces produced a large hole in the fuselage structure and disrupted the main cabin floor. Major cracks continued to propagate from the large hole while containers and items of cargo ejected through the hole, striking the empennage, left- and right tail plane. The forward fuselage and flight deck area separated when the aircraft was in a nose down and left roll attitude.
The nose section then knocked the no. 3 engine off its pylon. The remaining aircraft disintegrated while it was descending nearly vertically from 19000 feet to 9000 feet. A section of cabin floor and baggage hold fell onto housing at Rosebank Terrace, Lockerbie. The main wing structure struck the ground with a high yaw angle at Sherwood Crescent, Lockerbie causing a massive fire.
The Semtex bomb which caused the explosion had probably been hidden in a radio cassette player and was transferred to PA103 from a Pan Am Boeing 727 flight, arriving from Frankfurt.
After a three-year joint investigation by the Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation indictments for murder were issued on November 13, 1991, against Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer and the head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines (LAA), and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, the LAA station manager in Luqa Airport, Malta. United Nations sanctions against Libya and protracted negotiations with the Libyan leader Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi secured the handover of the accused on April 5, 1999.
On January 31, 2001, Megrahi was convicted of murder by a panel of three Scottish judges, and sentenced to 27 years in prison. Fhimah was acquitted.
Scan from a slide, London Heathrow, August 20th 1988. Posted to Flickr December 21st 2013, 25 years following such tragic loss of life. May they all rest in peace.
Pan Am 747 'N739PA' , 'Clipper Maid of the Seas'
Album : London Heathrow pre digital, B747.
The ill fated Pan Am 747 N739PA 'Clipper Maid of the Seas' at Heathrow. Sadly a little over four months later this airliner met a tragic end with the loss of 243 passengers, 16 crew and 11 people on the ground whilst operating flight PA103 from London Heathrow to its intended destination of New York JFK.
N739PA on December 21st 1988 departed London-Heathrow runway 27R for New York at 18:25. At 19:03 'Shanwick' transmitted an oceanic clearance. At that time an explosion occurred in the aircraft's forward cargo hold at position 4L. The explosive forces produced a large hole in the fuselage structure and disrupted the main cabin floor. Major cracks continued to propagate from the large hole while containers and items of cargo ejected through the hole, striking the empennage, left- and right tail plane. The forward fuselage and flight deck area separated when the aircraft was in a nose down and left roll attitude.
The nose section then knocked the no. 3 engine off its pylon. The remaining aircraft disintegrated while it was descending nearly vertically from 19000 feet to 9000 feet. A section of cabin floor and baggage hold fell onto housing at Rosebank Terrace, Lockerbie. The main wing structure struck the ground with a high yaw angle at Sherwood Crescent, Lockerbie causing a massive fire.
The Semtex bomb which caused the explosion had probably been hidden in a radio cassette player and was transferred to PA103 from a Pan Am Boeing 727 flight, arriving from Frankfurt.
After a three-year joint investigation by the Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation indictments for murder were issued on November 13, 1991, against Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer and the head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines (LAA), and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, the LAA station manager in Luqa Airport, Malta. United Nations sanctions against Libya and protracted negotiations with the Libyan leader Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi secured the handover of the accused on April 5, 1999.
On January 31, 2001, Megrahi was convicted of murder by a panel of three Scottish judges, and sentenced to 27 years in prison. Fhimah was acquitted.
Scan from a slide, London Heathrow, August 20th 1988. Posted to Flickr December 21st 2013, 25 years following such tragic loss of life. May they all rest in peace.