Hijacked – Flight 73: The hostage who survived the 1986 Pan Am plane attack – and has now been told why by one of the terrorists
Wearing a red duvet jacket, an old T-shirt and a Panama hat, all of which had seen better days, Mike Thexton stood out like a sore thumb when he turned into the business class section of Pan Am Flight 73.
It was 5 September 1986, the plane sitting on the tarmac at Karachi airport in Pakistan in the early hours of the morning. Desperate for a decent night’s sleep and good food as he made his way back to the UK from a mountaineering trek, Mike had swapped his flight to get home a little earlier and decided to upgrade for the first time in his life.
“I can still call to mind the feeling as I put my bag down on this very big seat,” he says now. “I took out a book and thought: this is fantastic.”
The plane never took off. As it sat on the runway, Palestinian terrorists dressed as security officers stormed the aircraft, armed with Kalashnikovs, pistols and explosives; it was the start of a terrifying 16-hour ordeal for almost 400 passengers and crew on board.
Mike, aged 27 at the time, was taken hostage towards the start of the hijack after the terrorists collected passports and called his name. A gun was pointed towards him.
“By then, I was never in doubt they would shoot me,” he says. “I thought: somebody is going to die today, and it’s going to be me.”
In the end, the majority of the killing was indiscriminate; guns were fired and explosives detonated in darkness as the plane’s power went down after about 15 hours. Twenty-one people died and more than 100 were injured; but despite his initial call-up, Mike was spared.
Almost 40 years later, his story has had an extraordinary update. As part of a new Sky feature documentary, Hijacked: Flight 73, he was able to have a conversation with the man who held him at gunpoint – and discovered there was a reason he left the plane alive.
It starts with the motivation for his trip: his brother, Peter Thexton.
‘It was important to me to see where my brother died’
Mike Thexton’s older brother, Peter Thexton
Peter was a doctor and a climber who had died three years earlier, aged 30, on Broad Peak, the 12th highest mountain in the world.
Following an unsuccessful attempt on Everest in 1980, Peter was part of a group aiming to climb K2 and used the nearby Broad Peak, on the border of Pakistan and China, for acclimatisation to extreme altitude. During the trek, he developed fluid on his lungs and had to be lowered down to a high camp at 24,000ft. Despite efforts to save him, he died during the night.
Mike, now 63, from southwest London, wanted to honour his big brother. “It was important to me to see where he died,” he tells Sky News. “It was only years later when I had children of my own that I suddenly thought about my parents, that they would have not wanted me to go.”
On the plane, his first realisation something was wrong was when he heard shouting. Then he saw a man struggling with a flight attendant.
“He had a pistol in his hand, his arm wrapped round her. I remember thinking: that’s a man with a gun, how extraordinary. I didn’t duck or run away or go to help or anything, I just stared like an idiot.”
‘I was told to kneel in the doorway’
It quickly became apparent the militants’ hijack was not going to plan. The large aircraft, a jumbo jet, had an upper floor and there was confusion over where the cockpit was located, giving the pilots time to escape – and therefore no chance of the plane being under terrorist control in the air.
The terrorists were part of the Abu Nidal Organisation (ANO), which was responsible for several attacks in the 1980s; the plan for Pan Am 73 was to force the pilots to fly them to Cyprus and Israel, where other members of their militant group had been jailed on terror charges. Rajesh Kumar, 29, was the first passenger to be shot dead following failed attempts to negotiate with officials on the ground for the pilot to return.
When Mike’s name was called out, he got up. “I didn’t look much like my passport photo after a couple of months in the mountains, but I knew they would find me anyway. I felt I had to do what I was told.”
He remained calm. He had not witnessed the death of his fellow passenger, but flight attendants had. He was asked if he was carrying a gun by the group’s leader, Zaid Hassan Abd Latif Safarini. “It was the most ridiculous question. I was probably very close to hysterics, I just burst out laughing… and then he told me to kneel in the doorway.”
The conversation with a killer
Crew members around him were in tears. Mike attempted to appeal to his captor. “‘Please, please don’t hurt me. My brother has died in the mountains, my parents have no one else’. He just waved his hand as if to say, I haven’t got time for that. That’s not important. In effect, I’m going to do what I’m going to do, and you don’t really matter.”
He was left in the doorway for several hours, convinced he was going to die. In an attempt to connect with the attackers, he prayed, touching his head to the floor. “I stayed very calm,” he says. “I’d spent a couple of months in the mountains, mainly thinking about my brother and his death, and I just felt terribly sad for my parents. They had lost my brother… and then this.”
The hours rolled on and Mike eventually fell asleep. “People ask how, but I was exhausted. It’s very tiring being afraid for that long.” He remembers being woken by one of the terrorists kicking his feet. “‘Up, up, move’, he said, and put me back with the others. I couldn’t understand it.”
As the power went off and the shooting began, Mike made his escape as people poured out on to one of the wings of the plane. Like many others, he jumped. “For so many years afterwards, I thought about why they didn’t shoot me when they had the chance.”
The Hijacked documentary gave him the opportunity to find out. Producers had made contact with Safarini, who is serving a 160-year sentence in the US after originally being jailed in Pakistan for 15 years.
“I thought long and hard about it,” says Mike. “I certainly didn’t want people watching this film thinking I was having a friendly conversation with the man who killed all those people. But it was an opportunity I had to take.”
He had never forgotten the man he thought would end his life. But perhaps surprisingly, Safarini also remembered Mike Thexton. When Mike asked him why he was spared, he told him it was because of his brother. “I was speechless. It never occurred to me that he had even paid any attention, or cared, 12 hours earlier when I had told him that. It was stunning.”
The hero flight attendants
Pic: Sunshine Vesuwala/ Blast Films/ Sky UK
Mike is one of a number of survivors who share their stories in the new documentary. Another is Sunshine Vesuwala, who had been a flight attendant for just six months before the attack.
She remembers getting on the plane that day and noticing the doors were missing from a storage cabinet. “It was kind of swinging and had no support at the bottom,” she tells Sky News. “It was a little worrisome. But it was actually the best thing because we managed to shove people into the galley under the counter, and they were saved.”
When Sunshine first saw a man dressed in a security uniform holding a gun to a passenger’s head, she wasn’t afraid. “We thought there was something wrong with the passenger, that he was a smuggler or something,” she says. Then he grabbed flight attendant Neerja Bhanot. “That was when we realised it was us they were after.”
Before the attackers could find the pilots, Sunshine was called. “I was on my knees in the aisle; everyone had to put their hands in the air and just be quiet. He called me up – ‘you, come here’ – so I got up and I went.” She was asked to point out the cockpit and tried to stall. When the attackers realised the pilots had left, they asked her if they were men. “I said yes. He said they had run away, and he laughed.”
But it was the best thing the captains could have done, she says. “Any little thing in flight, under pressure… we didn’t know what they were up to and it basically comes down to lives being saved.”
When the attackers asked for passports, Sunshine helped collect them. She hid those of white Americans, fearing they would be targeted. As the hours passed, she listened out for the attackers potentially revealing each others’ names, writing them down on plasters she was carrying for potential identification later.
“I really didn’t think we’d survive,” she says. “It was a question of delaying the inevitable.”
When the lights went out, a passenger managed to open a door amid chaos as the attackers started firing. “I could see people running. They got on to the wing and some were jumping. Everyone was in a panic. So I went out and whoever was going to jump, I let them jump. The wing was full and there was no way I could control the crowd.”
Rather than jumping herself, she went back into the plane with another crew member to help those who needed it. Her colleague Neerja had done the same. Sunshine found her inside, injured. “She collapsed on the floor. We carried her and pushed her down [a slide that had been inflated].” Neerja was still alive at this point, says Sunshine, but later died of her injuries.
Mike is one of several survivors speaking about his ordeal. Pic: Blast Films/ Sky UK
When she herself was back on the ground, her first thought was to find Mike.
“He was a hostage in the front for a very long time and I was worried,” she says. “I didn’t know whether he was alive or dead. I saw him and just grabbed hold of him.”
Mike went on to write a book about his experience, What Happened To The Hippy Man? Now, he is pleased to have some answers about the ordeal – and how his brother’s story saved his life.
“I think [Safarini] thought that this person has lost somebody who was close to him,” he says. “Then it just becomes that little bit harder to shoot him. I was a real person, and I’d lost my brother.”
Hijacked airs on Sky Documentaries and Now from 29 April
Entertainment
I Swear: The film fighting back against abuse and ‘cheap laughs’ at Tourette’s expense
When John Davidson was 10 years old, he experienced his first symptoms of Tourette syndrome – small facial tics and eye blinking.
By the time he was 13, the neurological condition was causing full-body movements so extreme he compares himself with the young heroine in horror film The Exorcist.
John tells Sky News: “There’s a scene where the girl’s on the bed and her whole body’s twitching about and screaming. That’s almost what it felt like. My tics became so extreme that I was hurting myself. I was pulling muscles. I was tired all the time.
“I would break down and cry so many times in a day because I was totally out of control. Something had completely taken over my mind and my body.”
John Davidson’s life story has been made into a film, with Robert Aramayo in the lead role. Pic: StudioCanal
Growing up in Galashiels in the Scottish Borders, John was repeatedly told his symptoms were in his head – or worse, intentional – when a chance meeting with a visiting junior doctor while in hospital led to a diagnosis.
Largely unheard of in the 1980s, today, high-profile figures including Scottish musician Lewis Capaldi and US star Billie Eilish have publicly spoken about living with Tourette’s.
Affecting more than 300,000 people in Britain, it’s more common than many think. One schoolchild in every hundred is estimated to be affected by the syndrome, according to NHS England.
While severity can range, there is currently no cure.
And while the University of Nottingham is working on a device which uses electrical pulses to suppress tic urges, the wristband – called Neupulse – is currently awaiting full medical approval.
John Davidson MBE, with his black Labrador Suki. Pic: StudioCanal
‘Medication turned me into a zombie’
Treated with drugs as a child, John suffered devastating side-effects: “Anti-psychotic medications turned me into a zombie. I’ve got probably about a two-year period in my teens where I have no real proper memories.”
Frustrated by the lack of support available to him growing up, John is now a Tourette syndrome campaigner, recognised for his work with an MBE.
But even that came with challenges unique to his condition. At the 2019 ceremony at Holyrood Palace, when collecting his award, John shouted “F*** the Queen” at Elizabeth II.
He says: “It was horrific for me. It was like the last thing I ever wanted to have to shout. And I think that’s the nature of the coprolalia, part of the condition, where it’s the worst possible thing you could say in that situation.”
Affecting a minority of the Tourette’s population, coprolalia is the involuntary utterance of socially inappropriate words or phrases.
While less common, it’s the feature of Tourette’s most often portrayed in the media.
John goes on: “It came as much of a shock to me as to everyone else, you know? But I’m the one in the moment having to deal with those emotions and feelings of wanting the ground to swallow me up. [Thinking] I don’t want to be here any more.”
Maxine Peake also stars in the film. Pic: StudioCanal
‘Living with it is absolutely awful’
Now, in a bid to tackle the stereotype, a film is being made about John’s life based on his 2025 memoir, with Game Of Thrones star Robert Aramayo playing the lead role.
No stranger to media exposure himself, John has appeared in numerous documentaries over the years, following on from the groundbreaking 1989 documentary about his life, John’s Not Mad. But it hasn’t always been a positive experience.
John says: “Every time they make a documentary, they make such a thing about the swearing part, which then stigmatises the condition because people are then left to assume that everyone with Tourette’s swears and shouts obscenities.”
In reality, coprolalia is not typical of the condition and only affects around one in 10 people with Tourette’s.
John acknowledges there is a comedic element to this: “When people think of uncontrollably swearing like that, it’s funny. ‘Oh my God’, you know, ‘shock, horror’. But for the one living with it, it’s absolutely awful.”
Scottish actor Peter Mullan with Robert Aramayo. Pic: StudioCanal
‘Let’s have sex!’
It’s a sentiment the film’s director echoes.
Kirk Jones first met John in 2022. Meeting him at his house to discuss the potential of making the film, John opened the door and, after inviting him in, shouted in his face: “Let’s have sex!”
His first introduction to John’s verbal ticks, the director admits it was a “steep learning curve”.
He tells Sky News: “There’s something about Tourette’s, which I don’t think has made it a very friendly or accessible condition. I think that’s down to the fact that people who have coprolalia come across as being aggressive or argumentative or difficult or upsetting people, and I think that’s unfair. They need as much support as anyone else.”
The director says it took him some time to gain John’s trust, showing he wanted to do more than just revisit tired stereotypes.
He says: “The Tourette’s community had been kind of abused in the past. They’ve been invited to appear on TV shows or radio or be in newspaper articles, under the guise of helping people to understand Tourette’s more. But what the TV channel or the radio show really wanted was just a cheap laugh.
“When I first met John and started talking about the idea of the film, he was understandably suspicious.”
Handing over some creative control, John is also an executive producer on the film.
Actor Francesco Piacentini-Smith as Murray. Pic: StudioCanal
‘When you laugh, it breaks the ice’
Now, at 54, and having lived with the condition for over 40 years, John believes people are becoming more tolerant of Tourette’s, but would love to see further acceptance.
“It’s about not being shocked. It’s not about being dead serious with a straight face. Feel free to laugh, because when you laugh, it breaks the ice.
“I wish people had the confidence to approach people with Tourette’s and just deal with it as if it was an everyday thing.”
The director, too, hopes the film will have a real-world impact and open people’s eyes to the reality of the condition.
He says: “I hope this film can play a small part in starting to refocus people’s attention on helping and supporting people rather than just laughing or mocking.”
I Swear is in UK and Irish cinemas from Friday 10 October.
Anyone looking for support or information about Tourette syndrome can access resources at Tourettes Action or Tourette Scotland for those living in Scotland.
Dolly Parton has declared she “ain’t dead yet” after her sister raised concerns about the singer’s health by asking people to pray for her.
“There are just a lot of rumours flying around. But I figured if you heard it from me, you’d know that I was okay,” the 79-year-old singer said in a new two-minute video posted on social media.
“I’m not ready to die yet. I don’t think God is through with me. And I ain’t done working,” she added.
In the footage, captioned “I ain’t dead yet!”, the 9 to 5 singer is seen on a set speaking directly to the camera.
On Tuesday, a Facebook post shared by her sister Freida Parton escalated concerns around Parton’s health when she wrote that she had been “up all night praying for my sister, Dolly”.
Hours later, Freida Parton followed up with a clarification. “I want to clear something up. I didn’t mean to scare anyone or make it sound so serious when asking for prayers for Dolly,” she wrote.
“She’s been a little under the weather, and I simply asked for prayers because I believe so strongly in the power of prayer.”
Dolly Parton during a concert in Nashville, Tennessee, in March. Pic: AP
Last month, Parton postponed her first Las Vegas residency in 32 years, citing “health challenges”.
She was scheduled to perform six shows at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in December. The dates have been moved to next September
Parton offered her own clarification about her health condition in Wednesday’s video.
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“Everyone thinks that I am sicker than I am. Do I look sick to you? I’m working hard here! Anyway, I wanted to put everybody’s mind at ease, those of you who seem to be real concerned, which I appreciate,” she continued.
“And I appreciate your prayers because I’m a person of faith. I can always use the prayers for anything and everything.”
Dolly Parton performs with the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders in 2023. Pic: Reuters
She also referenced her late husband of nearly 60 years Carl Dean who died earlier this year at the age of 82.
“I want you to know that I’m OK. I’ve got some problems as I’ve mentioned. Back when my husband Carl was very sick, that was for a long time, and then when he passed, I didn’t take care of myself. So I let a lot of things go that I should’ve been taking care of,” she said.
“So anyway, when I got around to it, the doctor said: ‘We need to take care of this. We need to take care of that.’ Nothing major, but I did have to cancel some things so I could be closer to home, closer to Vanderbilt, where I’m kind of having a few treatments here and there.”
And in true Parton fashion, she ended with a joke: “I wanted you to know that I’m not dying”.
Dolly Parton’s sister has said that the country singer is “going to be just fine” after worrying fans by asking for prayers.
Freida Parton had asked people for prayers for the Jolene and I Will Always Love You singer on Tuesday.
“Last night, I was up all night praying for my sister, Dolly. Many of you know she hasn’t been feeling her best lately,” Ms Parton wrote in a Facebook post.
“I truly believe in the power of prayer, and I have been [led] to ask all of the world that loves her to be prayer warriors and pray with me.
“She’s strong, she’s loved, and with all the prayers being lifted for her, I know in my heart she’s going to be just fine. Godspeed, my sissy Dolly. We all love you!”
Parton performs during her concert in Ijsselhallen in Zwolle, Netherlands, in 2007. Pic: AP
After shocked fans took to social media expressing worry about Parton’s health, her sister said in a second post on Wednesday: “I want to clear something up. I didn’t mean to scare anyone or make it sound so serious when asking for prayers for Dolly.
“She’s been a little under the weather, and I simply asked for prayers because I believe so strongly in the power of prayer. It was nothing more than a little sister asking for prayers for her big sister.”
It comes after Parton announced in September that she had to postpone her upcoming Las Vegas residency over “health challenges”.
Dolly Parton performs with the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders in 2023. Pic: Reuters
“As many of you know, I have been dealing with some health challenges, and my doctors tell me that I must have a few procedures,” the singer said at the time.
“As I joked with them, it must be time for my 100,000-mile check-up, although it’s not the usual trip to see my plastic surgeon!”
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Parton said she was postponing the shows because she is “not going to be able to rehearse and put together the show that I want you to see. You pay good money to see me perform, and I want to be at my best for you”.
The country star was set to perform six shows at Caesars Palace in December, but her performance dates have been moved to September 2026.
“Don’t worry about me quittin’ the business because God hasn’t said anything about stopping yet,” Parton said as she announced the postponement of her shows. “But I believe he is telling me to slow down right now so I can be ready for more big adventures with all of you.”
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