When terrorists hijacked a Pan American World Airways flight in 1986 and started detonating explosives and opening fire, flight attendant Neerja Bhanot knew she could save herself once she opened one of the airplane’s doors. Instead, she stayed and helped others to safety. Bhanot died that day, but her actions were not forgotten by those who survived.
Bhanot was born in Chandigarh, India on Sept. 7, 1963 to a father who was a journalist. At 16, she became a model posing for advertisements for multiple companies. At 21, Bhanot agreed to an arranged marriage to a man from the United Arab Emirates that lasted two months because of abuse.
She returned to India and continued her career as a model. While working in modeling, she began helping other women with makeup for special events. One day, while assisting a client with makeup for a job interview as a Pan Am flight attendant, she spontaneously applied for the job herself.
She was soon offered the position and sent to Miami for training as a purser, responsible for overseeing all money exchanged on the airplane. Less than a year into her new career, Bhanot faced a life-or-death situation when terrorists hijacked the plane she was on.
On Sept. 5, 1986, four armed hijackers belonging to the Abu Nidal Organization terrorist group stormed Pan Am Flight 73 during a stopover at Jinnah International Airport in Karachi, Pakistan. As soon as they boarded, Bhanot alerted the flight crew in the cockpit. The crew escaped through a hatch, preventing the airplane from taking off and being flown into a building. As the senior crew member, Bhanot was left in charge.
She got to work to keep passengers calm. Initially, the hijackers planned to force the pilots to fly them to Cyprus and Israel, where other members of the group were imprisoned for terrorist acts. But they grew frustrated after learning the pilots had already fled the plane.
The situation soon became a standoff as the hijackers demanded a pilot. They dragged 29-year-old Indian-American passenger Rajesh Kumar from his seat and forced him to kneel at an open airplane door with a gun to his head. When no pilot arrived after an hour, the hijackers shot and killed Kumar, escalating the situation.
About four hours into the siege, the hijackers demanded that flight attendants collect all American passports. They were targeting Americans and planned to kill them first.
Bhanot and her fellow flight attendants began collecting passengers’ passports. However, she ordered her crew to hide or discard American passports so the hijackers would not identify them.
After 17 hours, power inside the airplane failed, plunging the cabin into darkness. The hijackers grew impatient and began firing into the crowd and detonating explosives.
Bhanot raced to one of the airplane’s doors and pried it open. She could have escaped with the other flight attendants, but she didn’t. Instead, she stayed at the door, helping passengers evacuate safely.
The hijackers soon realized what Bhanot was doing and approached her. Bhanot threw herself in front of three children. Angered, the hijackers grabbed her by the hair and shot her at point-blank range. Bhanot was alive at the end of the attack, but she passed away shortly after.
“My mother said, ‘If something happens, you run away from there. You don’t hang around,’” Bhanot’s brother Annesh Bhanot said in a Brut India video. “That time she told my mother, ‘I won’t run, I’d rather die.’ And that’s what she did in the hijack also. She died, she refused to run away.”
In the end, 20 people were killed in the attack, and more than 100 of the plane’s 380 passengers were seriously injured. Bhanot was posthumously awarded the Ashok Chakra, India’s highest peacetime honor for bravery. She was the youngest person and only woman to receive the award.
A 7-year-old child aboard the flight grew up to become a pilot and has said Bhanot was his inspiration and that he owes his life to her.
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