Four hijackers, 2 Israeli Prime Ministers and Air India.
Reginald Levy, who was the captain of a hijacked Belgian airliner in 1972 was hailed as a hero for enabling Israeli commandos to storm the plane and rescue all 100 passengers and crew members.
Sabena Flight 571 from Brussels to Tel Aviv was 20 minutes out of Vienna on May 8, 1972, when four Arabs waving pistols rushed the cockpit.
Captain Levy calmly told the 90 passengers, “As you can see,we have friends aboard.”
The “friends” were members of Black September, a terrorist organization that grew out of the Palestinian defeat in the 1970 Jordanian civil war and was responsible for the killing of 11 members of the Israeli team at the Munich Olympics four months after the hijacking. The hijackers — two men and two women — ordered Captain Levy to land at Lydda Airport (later Ben-Gurion International Airport), where they threatened to blow up the plane unless 317 Palestinian guerrillas were released from Israeli prisons.
Within an hour of the radio message from Captain Levy reporting the hijacking, Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Dayan, was at the airport to deal with the crisis. After dark, Israeli saboteurs crept under the parked plane, deflated the tires and disconnected hydraulic equipment. Levy was astute enough not to disclose to the hijackers that his wife was one of the passengers. He had brought her on the flight for a romantic meal to celebrate his 50th birthday in Tel Aviv.
At the hijackers’ request, International Red Cross teams were summoned to carry messages between the plane and Mr. Dayan. After presenting their demands, the hijackers were alarmed to discover that they could not take off again. Captain Levy started a conversation to calm them down, and kept on chatting through the night. “I talked about everything under the sun,” he said later, “from navigation to sex.”
The next morning, to demonstrate their intentions, the hijackers sent Captain Levy to the terminal with a sample of the explosives they had on board. He told the Israelis much more, describing the hijackers, their positions and the black bags in which they were carrying explosives. He also told them, significantly, that there were no seats blocking the emergency doors.
Mr. Dayan promised the hijackers to repair the plane and bring the Palestinian prisoners to the airport. Bogus prisoners were shown to the hijackers from a distance, and another plane was taken out to a runway, supposedly to fly them to Cairo.
Twenty-one hours after Captain Levy’s plane had been hijacked, two trucks carrying 18 men in the white overalls of mechanics drove up to the jetliner. They milled about the plane, supposedly checking the tires and other equipment. Suddenly they tore open the emergency exits above the wings and opened fire inside the cabin.
The fusillade from the men in overalls — in reality members of the elite commando unit Sayeret Matkal — ended within 90 seconds. The commandos were led by Ehud Barak, who later became Israel’s defense minister and Prime Minister, and among them was Benjamin Netanyahu, the future prime minister.
The two male hijackers, who had returned fire, were killed. Another hijacker, a Jordanian woman, was not injured. The fourth, also a woman, was seriously wounded, as were several passengers. Tearful passengers and crew members slid off the wings and were bused to a terminal.
Levy was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire. In 1940, Levy joined the RAF and crossed the Atlantic to train with the US Army Air Corps. Back in England, he was posted to No 105 Squadron at Horsham St Faith, near Norwich, flying Mosquito IV twin-engined light bombers. In November 1942, having been injured by anti-aircraft fire over northern Holland, he flew the damaged aircraft back, on one engine. The remaining engine failed over East Anglia, the bomber crashed into a wood, and yet Levy and his navigator survived.
From the summer of 1943 until January 1944, Levy flew four-engined Halifax heavy bombers. His missions included the first night of Operation Gomorrah, the 10-day devastation of Hamburg; Operation Hydra (17/18 August), the raid on the Peenemünde rocket research centre on the Baltic; and the bombing of Berlin on the night of 28/29 January 1944. His plane was hit – while raiding Mannheim – by a Luftwaffe nightfighter, and, over Hanover, a bomb from another aircraft plunged through his Halifax, without detonating. He spent the rest of the war as an RAF flying instructor. He was awarded the coveted Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) during wartime.
The Air India connection
His postwar work took brought him to India for an instructorship with the newly created Air India. Then in 1952 he joined Sabena, where he remained until 1981.
Following the hijacking, he was made a Chevalier of Belgium's Order of the Crown.
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