Pan Am Flight 73 hostage reveals why hijacker spared his life

May 12, 2023

A survivor of the Pan Am Flight 73 hostage crisis revealed how a ruthless gunman on the New York-bound plane from Pakistan spared his life after he told the terrorist about the tragic loss of his brother.

In a new Sky documentary, Mike Thexton recalls the harrowing tale of the 1986 flight and explains how he reconnected with the gunman he came face-to-face with during the disastrous hijacking that left 22 dead and about 150 injured.

“It’s nice to hear your voice,” Zaid Hassan Abd Latif Safarini tells Thexton in the documentary “Hijacked.”

“I still remember your face.

“I cannot forget that day.”

Nearly 37 years after the deadly incident, Thexton asked Safarini why his life was spared.

To his surprise, the terrorist said he was moved by the story of his brother Peter, who died while mountain climbing.

Thexton had traveled to Pakistan to reach the peak where his brother had perished.

“You mentioned to me that your brother is killed. I say, ‘OK man, just sit aside.’ It touched my heart, actually.”

Thexton said he broke down after the call, finally learning that after decades of theorizing why he was spared, it was his brother that kept him alive.

Mike Thexton traveled to Pakistan in 1986 to pay tribute to his brother who died mountain climbing.

Zaid Hassan Abd Latif Safarini was arrested as the ringleader of the 1986 Pan Am flight 73 hijacking.

Nearly 37 years later, Thexton learned that he was spared because the terrorist sympathized with the loss of his brother.

Thexton, an accountancy teacher who has written about his experience aboard the flight, said he flew to Pakistan in the summer of 1986 to reach the base of Broad Peak to say goodbye to Peter, who died from altitude sickness in a crevasse on the mountain.

After finding closure, Thexton said he received a call to return to Europe early for work, prompting him to schedule an earlier flight that would stop in Frankfurt, Germany.

Unbeknownst to him, the flight was the ill-fated Pan Am flight 73, which was seized by Safarini and three others who snuck into the tarmac to hold nearly 400 passengers hostage on behalf of a Palestinian terror cell.

The hijacking left 22 dead and nearly 150 people wounded after the terrorists opened fire.

Bullet holes could be seen in the plane's windshield. — Bullet holes could be seen in the plane’s windshield.

Mike Thexton smiling as he boarded the ill-fated plane at the Karachi airport.

The terrorists were keen on killing Americans and foreigners on the New York-bound flight, and when Thexton was identified as a Brit through his passport, he was summoned to meet with Safarini.

It was then that he shared his family’s story with the terrorist as he pleaded for his life, with Safarini surprisingly letting him go back to his seat.

At the end of the 15-hour siege, officials turned off the power to take down the gunmen, who opened fire on the passengers.

The flight was held hostage for 15 hours with about 400 people aboard.

Bloody shoes from the passengers aboard were laid out in the airport following the bloodbath.

Thexton, then 27, spent decades trying to learn why he was spared on that day.

Following the phone call with Safarini, documentary director Ben Anthony said he was shocked by Thexton’s tears, describing the man as “stoic” and always composed in the weeks he’d been interviewing the survivor.

“When he learned his brother had saved him, his emotions cracked,” Anthony said.

“The idea that he’d given him this gift from beyond the grave knocked us all for six.”

Thexton admitted that after the phone call, he wrote a letter thanking Safarini for his honesty, but he has yet to send it because he doesn’t want to appear sympathetic to the man responsible for the death of others.

“I don’t think of him as Zaid Safarini who chose to spare me. I think of him as Zaid Safarini who tried to kill me,” Thexton said.

“What happened lives in my brain as a thing that completely changed my life.”