Lufthansa Flight 181

The hijacked aircraft changed course at around 2:30 p.m. (as noticed by air traffic controllers at Aix-en-Provence) and landed at Fiumicino Airport in Fiumicino, Rome at 3:45 p.m. for refuelling. The hijackers made their first demands, acting in concert with the Red Army Faction group, the Siegfried Hausner Commando, who had kidnapped West German industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer five weeks earlier, demanded the release of 10 Red Army Faction (RAF) terrorists detained at the JVA Stuttgart-Stammheim prison plus two Palestinian compatriots held in Turkey and US$15 million.[4] West German Interior Minister Werner Maihofer contacted his Italian counterpart Francesco Cossiga and suggested that the plane's tyres should be shot out to prevent the aircraft from leaving. After consulting his colleagues Cossiga decided that the most desirable solution for the Italian government was to expunge the problem altogether. The aircraft was refuelled with a full 11 tons of fuel, which enabled Mahmud to instruct Vietor (who had been allowed back into the cockpit on the ground at Rome after Schumann requested Akache to bring Vietor back into the flight deck) to take off and fly the plane to Larnaca at 17:45 (5:45 p.m.) without even obtaining clearance from Rome air traffic control.[4]

The Landshut landed in Larnaca, Cyprus, at 20:28 (8:28 pm). After about an hour, a local PLO representative arrived at the airport and over the radio tried to persuade Mahmud to release the hostages. This only provoked a furious response from Mahmud who started screaming at him over the intercom in Arabic until the PLO representative gave up and left. The aircraft was then refuelled and Schumann asked flight control for a routing to Beirut. He was told that Beirut Airport was blockaded and closed to them and Mahmud suggested that they would fly to Damascus instead. The Landshut took off at 22:50 (10:50 pm) heading for Beirut but was refused landing permission at 11:01 pm. After also being denied landing permission in Damascus at 11:14 pm, Baghdad at 12:13 am, and Kuwait at 12:58 am, they jetted off to Bahrain.[4]

Schumann was told by a passing Qantas airliner that Bahrain Airport was also closed to them. He radioed flight control and told them that they had insufficient fuel to fly elsewhere and despite being told again that the airport was closed, he was suddenly given an automatic landing frequency by the flight controller. They finally touched down in Bahrain at 01:52 am in the early hours of 14 October. On arrival the aircraft was immediately surrounded by armed troops and Mahmud radioed the tower that unless they were withdrawn he would shoot the co-pilot. After a stand-off with the tower, with Mahmud setting a five‑minute deadline and holding a fully loaded pistol to Vietor's head, the troops were subsequently withdrawn. The aircraft was then refuelled and they took off for Dubai at 3:24 am.[4]

Approaching Dubai, they were again refused and denied landing permission. Overflying the Dubai airport in the early light of dawn they could see that the runway was blocked with trucks and fire engines. Running short of fuel, Schumann radioed the tower they would have to land anyway. As they made a low pass over the airport they saw that the obstacles were being removed. At 05:40 local time,(October 14th) the pilots made a smooth, normal touchdown on the airport's main runway, touching down in the sheikhdom of Dubai at sunrise. The plane was parked at the parking bay around 5:51 am at daybreak.[4]

In Dubai, the terrorists told the control tower to send people to empty the toilet tanks, supply food, water, medicine, newspapers, and to take away the rubbish. Captain Schumann was able to communicate the number of hijackers on board as well as specifying that they were two men and two women.[5] In an interview with journalists, this information was revealed by Dubai's Sheikh Mohammed, then Minister of Defence.[6] The hijackers learned about this, possibly from the radio, causing Mahmud to angrily threaten to kill Schumann for secretly sharing this information out of the hijacked plane. The aircraft remained parked on the tarmac at Dubai airport all throughout 15 October, during which the jetliner experienced technical problems with the electrical generator, air conditioning and the APU breaking down. The hijackers demanded the engineers to fix the plane. On the morning of Sunday 16 October, Mahmud threatened to start shooting hostages if the aircraft was not refuelled and the Dubai authorities eventually agreed to refuel the plane. In the meantime, both Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski, the West German minister responsible for handling the hijacking, and Colonel Ulrich Wegener, commander of the elite German anti-terrorist squad GSG 9, had arrived in Dubai to try to persuade the government to agree to let GSG 9 commandos into Dubai to storm the aircraft. However, after permission was granted for GSG 9 commandos to storm the aircraft, SAS and GSG 9 senior operatives insisted on additional combat exercise and dry-runs on an adjacent airstrip. Reports suggest up to 45 hours of training was conducted whilst based in Dubai (over a period of 80 hours). While Wegener was considering his options, the Arabs fully refuelled the Landshut plane, the pilots started up the engines and the jetliner was on the move again. At 12:19 pm on 16 October it took off, heading for Salalah and Masirah in Oman, where landing permission was once again denied with the airports blockaded. After Riyadh also blockaded and closed their airport to the pilots at 2:50 pm on the afternoon of 16 October (three days after the hijacking began), a course to Aden in South Yemen, at the limit of their fuel range, was established.[4]

Approaching and overflying Aden, they were yet again denied landing permission with the airport closed, this time at Aden International Airport, and the two main runways were blocked by military vehicles. The plane was running dangerously low on fuel, but the Aden airport authorities adamantly refused to clear the runways to let the plane land, so the co-pilot Vietor had no choice but to make an emergency landing on a sand strip almost parallel to both runways. The plane remained largely intact but the Aden authorities told the hijackers and pilots that they would have to leave but the two pilots were skeptical of the condition of the aircraft after a rough landing on rugged, rocky and sandy terrain, feeling that it was unsafe to take off and fly the jetliner again after a thorough engineering inspection. After the engineers claimed that everything was alright, Mahmud consequently gave Schumann permission to leave the aircraft in order to check the condition of the landing gear and the engines. Both engines had ingested a copiously excessive amount of sand and dirt at maximum reverse thrust, thus were clogged up. The landing gear did not collapse but its structure was weakened and its mechanism was damaged. However Schumann did not immediately return to the plane after the inspection, even after numerous attempts to recall him from the hijackers by threatening to blow up the aircraft on the ground. The reasons for his prolonged absence remain unclear to this day, however, some reports including interviews with the Yemeni airport authorities imply that Schumann asked them to prevent the continuation of the flight and to accede to the terrorists' demands.[7][8]

After this Schumann returned to the aircraft and boarded the plane to face the wrath of Mahmud, who forced him to kneel on the floor in the passenger cabin and then fatally shot him dead in the head with a targeted headshot in cold blood without giving him a chance to explain himself.[7][8] The hijacked plane was refuelled at 01:00 on 17 October and at 2:02 am, coaxed by co-pilot Jürgen Vietor, it dangerously and sluggishly took off from Aden on course for the Somali capital of Mogadishu.[4]

On the morning of 17 October at daybreak, around 06:34 local time, the Landshut made an unannounced and textbook landing at Aden Adde airport in Mogadishu. The Somali government had initially refused the plane landing permission, but relented when the jet appeared in Somali air space, for fear of endangering the passengers’ lives by turning the aircraft away. The leader Mahmud (Akache) told co-pilot Vietor that he was very impressed by Vietor's super-human accomplishment and that consequently he was free to leave the aircraft and flee, since the crippled plane was in no state to fly elsewhere. However Vietor opted to remain with the 82 passengers and three other crew members onboard. After parking the twin‐engine aircraft, which was parked in front of the main airport terminal and ringed at a distance by armed Somali troops, Schumann's corpse was dumped off the jetliner via the right rear emergency evacuation slide, onto the tarmac and was taken away in an ambulance. During the day, the hijackers asked for food and drugs, which were sent to the hijacked plane by the Somali government. But a Somali request that the hijackers release women and children on board in exchange for the supplies was rejected.[9] An ultimatum was set for the RAF prisoners to be released by 16:00 local time or the aircraft would be blown up. After they had poured the duty-free spirits over the hostages in preparation for the destruction of the aircraft, the hijackers were told that the West German government had agreed to release the RAF prisoners but that their transfer to Mogadishu would take several more hours, so they agreed to extend the deadline to 02:30 the next morning (18 October).[4]

Operation Feuerzauber (Fire Magic)
Date 18 October 1977 Location Mogadishu, Somali Democratic Republic Result GSG 9 victory
Belligerents
GSG 9 22nd SAS (logistics and planning) Somali Army (support)	PFLP
Commanders and leaders
Ulrich Wegener Alastair Morrison Siad Barre	Zohair Akache  †
Strength
30 GSG 9 operators 2 SAS operators	4 hijackers
Casualties and losses
1 wounded	3 killed 1 wounded/captured
4 civilians wounded

Meanwhile, while the West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt attempted to negotiate an agreement with Somali President Siad Barre, special envoy Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski and GSG 9 commander Ulrich Wegener arrived at Mogadishu airport from Jeddah in a Lufthansa 707 aircraft co-piloted by Rüdiger von Lutzau (Gabriele Dillmann's fiancé). In West Germany, a team of 30 GSG 9 commandos under their deputy commander Major Klaus Blatte had assembled at Hangelar airfield near Bonn awaiting instructions. The commandos took off from Cologne-Bonn Airport on a Boeing 707 on Monday morning (17 October) planning to fly to Djibouti, within a short flying time of Somalia, while Schmidt negotiated with the Somalis. When they were flying over Ethiopia, agreement was reached and permission was given to land at Mogadishu. The aircraft landed at 20:00 local time with all lights out to avoid detection by the hijackers.[4]

After four hours to unload all of their equipment and to undertake the necessary reconnaissance, Wegener and Blatte finalised the assault plan, scheduled to start at 02:00 local time. They decided to approach from the rear of the aircraft in its blind spot in six teams using black-painted aluminium ladders to gain access to the aircraft through the escape hatches under the fuselage and via the doors over the wings. In the meantime a fictitious progress report on the journey being taken by the released prisoners was being fed to Mahmud by the German representatives in the airport tower. Just after 02:00, Mahmud was told that the plane carrying the prisoners had just departed from Cairo after refuelling and he was asked to provide the conditions of the prisoner/hostage exchange over the radio.[4]

Several minutes before the rescue, Somali soldiers lit a fire 60 metres (200 ft) in front of the jet, as a diversionary tactic, prompting Akache and two of the other three hijackers to rush to the cockpit to observe what was going on, and isolating them from the hostages in the cabin.[10] At 02:07 local time, the GSG 9 commandos silently climbed up the blackened aluminium ladders and opened the emergency doors, Wegener, at the head of one group, opened the forward door, and two other groups, led by Sergeant-Major Dieter Fox and Sergeant Joachim Huemmer stormed the aircraft by using the ladders to climb up onto the wings and opened both emergency doors at the same time. Shouting in German for the passengers and crew to get down to the floor, the commandos shot and killed two of the terrorists (Wabil Harb and Hind Alameh), and wounded Zohair Akache and Suhaila Sayeh. Akache died of his injuries hours later. One GSG 9 commando was wounded by return fire from the terrorists. Three passengers and a flight attendant were slightly wounded in the crossfire. An American passenger aboard the plane described the rescue: "I saw the door open and a man appears. His face was painted black and he starts shouting in German 'We're here to rescue you, get down!' [Wir sind hier, um dich zu retten, runter!] and they started shooting."[11]

The emergency escape chutes were deployed and passengers and crew were ordered to quickly evacuate the aircraft. At 02:12 local time, just five minutes after the assault had commenced, the commandos radioed: "Frühlingszeit! Frühlingszeit!" ("Springtime! Springtime!"), which was the code word for the successful completion of the operation. A few moments later a radio signal was sent to Chancellor Schmidt in Bonn: "Four opponents down – hostages free – four hostages slightly wounded – one commando slightly wounded".[4]

Stuttgart landed at Cologne Bonn Airport, on 18 October 1977, with GSG 9 team (seen) and hostages, photograph by Ludwig Wegmann

The rescuers escorted all 86 passengers to safety,[11] and a few hours later they were all flown to Cologne-Bonn Airport, where they landed in the early afternoon of Tuesday 18 October, and were given a hero's welcome.[12]