See Lufthansa's Hijacked Flight 181 Come Home After 40 Years

Oct. 11, 2017

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4 min read

See Lufthansa's Hijacked Flight 181 Come Home After 40 Years

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One of the most notorious planes in history, the Lufthansa Boeing 737-200 dubbed Landshut, finally returned to Germany 40 years after it was hijacked and flown around Europe, the Middle East and Somalia by terrorists before being retaken by German special forces.

Image by KARL-JOSEF HILDENBRAND/AFP/Getty Images.

The battered 737's fuselage and separated wings were flown from Brazil to Friedrichshafen in late September in a Volga-Dnepr Airlines Antonov An-124, with its passenger seats and engine brought over separately on a Volga-Dnepr Ilyushin Il-76. Members of the original hijacked flight crew from 1977 were on hand to greet the plane for its homecoming to German soil. It's to be reassembled and become an exhibit at the aeronautics-themed Dornier Museum Friedrichshafen.

An old Boeing 737 plane, the former "Landshut" aircraft of German airline Lufthansa, is seen in the cargo space of an Antonov AN 124 cargo plane after landing at the airport in Friedrichshafen, southern Germany, on September 23, 2017.Having quietly rusted away in Brazil for almost a decade, the "Landshut" finally came home, destined to serve as a memorial to a turbulent era. Around forty years ago, German anti-terror commandos stormed the "Landshut" Lufthansa jet in Somalia, shot its Palestinian hijackers and freed 90 hostages, a climax in a bloody era of far-left militancy. The 1977 Mogadishu raid became a symbol of the "German Autumn" when the state was at war with the "urban guerrillas" of the Red Army Faction (RAF), also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, and their international allies. / AFP PHOTO / dpa / Karl-Josef Hildenbrand / Germany OUT (Photo credit should read KARL-JOSEF HILDENBRAND/AFP/Getty Images) — Image by KARL-JOSEF HILDENBRAND/AFP/Getty Images.

Lufthansa Flight 181 and five crew were flying 86 passengers from Mallorca, Spain, to Frankfurt on Oct. 13, 1977, when four members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine used a handgun to gain control of the cockpit. The terrorists ordered the pilot to reroute to Larnaca, Cyprus, and demanded that the West German government release members of the Red Army Faction, a left-wing terrorist group. The plane was diverted to Rome to refuel before it flew to Larnaca, then hopped around the Middle East as authorities in various countries struggled to come up with solutions — first to Bahrain, then Dubai and Aden, where the terrorists fatally shot pilot Jürgen Schumann in the head. The plane finally landed in Mogadishu, Somalia, where German special forces stormed the plane, freed all the passengers and surviving crew, and killed three of the hijackers. (The fourth hijacker served two prison terms for the crime, and now lives in Oslo.) The incident hardened the official stance of the West German government, which vowed to never again negotiate with terrorists.

The Boeing 737 was repaired and returned to service with Lufthansa for eight years and bounced around various airlines, including the now-defunct Presidential Airways in the US and TAF Linhas Aéreas in Brazil, where it was decommissioned in 2008 and put into storage at Fortaleza International Airport. The German foreign ministry bought the plane for about $24,000 earlier this year for the Dornier Museum.

"To this day, the rescue of the Landshut is a living symbol of a free society, which cannot be defeated by fear and terror," German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel said when the government announced the purchase.

H/T: The Seattle Times