Am Flight 73 landed in Karachi. It had arrived from Mumbai and, had nothing gone wrong, would have departed for Frankfurt and onward to New York City. The flight was carrying, among members of other nationalities, Indians, Germans, Americans, and Pakistanis.
Unfortunately, the flight was hijacked while it was parked on the tarmac at Jinnah International Airport in Karachi.
Photo for representation purpose only. Source: Wikipedia Four heavily-armed terrorists, dressed as airport security guards, entered the aircraft while firing shots from an automatic weapon and seized control of the plane.
This is the story of NeerjaBhanot, the senior flight attendant on board, who helped a number of passengers escape. She was murdered while shielding three children from terrorist fire, less than 25 hours before her 23rd birthday.
After the terrorists boarded the plane, Neerja alerted the cockpit crew, who escaped through an overhead hatch in the cockpit. As the senior-most crew member remaining on board, this left Neerja in charge. One of the terrorists asked the flight crew to collect and hand over the passports of all passengers on board. When Neerja realised that the primary targets of the terrorists were American passengers, she hid their passports – even discarding some of them down the rubbish chute. From a total of 41 American passengers, only 2 were killed.
After holding passengers and crew members hostage for 17 hours on the runway, the terrorists opened fire. Neerja stayed on the plane to help passengers escape, even though she could have been the first to leave. She was shot while shielding three children from the bullets being fired by the terrorists.
Most of us will never find ourselves in a high-pressure situation, facing life or death the way Neerja did. True bravery emerges in the face of fear. We might never know what Neerja was thinking or feeling during those terrible hours of the hijacking, but we do know that she chose to respond to the actions of the terrorists with exceptional grace, courage, and grit. Of the 380 passengers and crew members on Flight 73, 20 were killed.
While many others were injured, they did survive – in no small part due to the actions of a 22-year-old flight attendant who chose compassion over cowardice and performed her duty till the very end.
And trust me if you listen how she died you'll be in tears ... While she was helping 3 children to get them out through emergency exit .. A terrorist came from behind ,caught her by her hair and shot her point blank ..
Salute to her.. Lost her life and gave life to 360 people!
#salutetoherbravery
And here's the legendary girl's picture
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