The hijack of an Afghan airliner ends in an anticlimax outside London.
Few crimes have such strict conventions as an airplane hijack.
There must be an aircraft, a plan to divert it and hijackers willing to risk their lives and those of innocents. All three elements were present in last week's takeover of a Boeing 727 owned by Ariana Afghan Airlines, Afghanistan's state carrier. Some of the original 188 passengers and crew were released along the way, but negotiations at Stansted dragged on for three days. It was all familiar, frightening stuff. At the end of the tale, though, the most rigid convention of all was broken.