page_title: Dawson's Field hijackings
section_title: BOAC Flight 775
hierarchical_section_title: Dawson's Field hijackings / Hijackings / BOAC Flight 775
caption_attribution_description: English: A picture of an airplane (name of it is on the file name).
context_page_description: In September 1970, members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked four airliners bound for New York City and one for London. Three aircraft were forced to land at Dawson's Field, a remote desert airstrip near Zarqa, Jordan, formerly Royal Air Force Station Zerqa, which then became PFLP's 'Revolutionary Airport'. By the end of the incident, one hijacker had been killed and one injury reported. This was the second instance of mass aircraft hijacking, after an escape from communist Czechoslovakia in 1950.
  On 6 September, TWA Flight 741 from Frankfurt and Swissair Flight 100 from Zürich were forced to land at Dawson's Field. On the same day, the hijacking of El Al Flight 219 from Amsterdam was foiled: hijacker Patrick Argüello was shot and killed, and his partner Leila Khaled was subdued and handed over to British authorities in London. Two PFLP hijackers, who were prevented from boarding the El Al flight, hijacked instead Pan Am Flight 93, a Boeing 747, diverting the large plane first to Beirut and then to Cairo, rather than to the small Jordanian airstrip.
context_section_description: On 9 September a fifth plane, BOAC Flight 775, a Vickers VC10 (registration G-ASGN), from Bombay (now Mumbai) to London via Bahrain and Beirut was hijacked after departing Bahrain and forcibly landed at Dawson's Field. This was the work of a PFLP sympathizer who wanted to influence the British government to free Leila Khaled.
  Footage of the plane taking off from Beirut for Dawson's Field is in the Pathe News archive.
caption: A BOAC Vickers VC10, a similar aircraft to that hijacked
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