EgyptAir Flight 648
airliner hijacking in November 1985
EgyptAir Flight 648 was a regularly scheduled international flight between Athens Ellinikon International Airport (Greece) and Cairo International Airport (Egypt). On 23 November 1985, a Boeing 737-200 airliner, servicing the flight was hijacked by the Palestinian terrorist organization Abu Nidal. The subsequent raid on the aircraft by Egyptian troops killed 56 of the 86 passengers, two of the three hijackers and two of the six crew.
Aircraft
The aircraft involved was a nine-year-old Boeing 737–266, MSN 21191, registered as SU-AYH, that was manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes in 1976. It was equipped with two Pratt & Whitney JT8D-17 engines.
Hijacking
On 23 November 1985, Flight 648 took off at 8 pm on its Athens-to-Cairo route. Ten minutes after takeoff, three Palestinian members of Abu Nidal hijacked the aircraft, the same group also responsible for the hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 a year later. The terrorists, declaring themselves to be Egyptian revolutionaries by the intercom, were well armed with guns and grenades.
The terrorists' commander, Salem Chakore, proceeded to check all passports while Omar Rezaq went to the cockpit to change the aircraft's course. At the same time, Chakore had the European, Australian, Israeli, and American passengers sit in the front of the aircraft while the rest, including the Greeks and Egyptians were sent to the back.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3273647. The Library of Congress control number is sh96001979. Authority coordinates are 35.858, 14.478. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1985 and 1976.
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This entry incorporates text from “EgyptAir Flight 648” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.