Michel Bacos, the valiant French pilot who was forced by terrorists to fly his jetliner to Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976, but refused to abandon Jewish passengers before an audacious rescue by Israeli commandos, has died in Nice, France aged 94. Celebrated in films and books, the swashbuckling rescue by Israelis disguised as Ugandan soldiers culminated a harrowing week in which hijackers from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Germany’s Baader-Meinhof Gang seized control of Air France Flight 139 less than eight minutes after it lifted off from Athens on June 27, 1976. The plane had stopped there on its way from Tel Aviv to Paris. The plane, carrying more than 240 passengers and a crew of 12, was diverted to Libya to refuel, then directed to fly more than 3,500 miles to Entebbe, where it landed with only 20 minutes of fuel remaining. Three days later, the hijackers freed the 148 passengers who were neither Jewish nor Israeli. They threatened to kill the rest unless 53 prisoners being held in Israel and other countries on terrorism charges were released. The plane’s crew was also permitted to depart.
Read the obituary in The Sydney Morning Herald (from the New York Times).