Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This book is aimed at a younger audience. It's only 48 pages with illustrations and photographs but nothing gruesome. This book was published to be distributed children's libraries. The story of Pan Am 103 on December 21, 1988 was flying over Lockerbie, Scotland when it exploded from a tiny bomb placed in a tape recorder in an unmatched suitcase aboard the Pan Am's 747 Clipper Maid of the Seas. Since it departed 25 minutes late from Heathrow for JFK Airport in Queens, New York, the plane's flightpath went over Scotland when the bomb finally detonated about 7:00pm British time killing everybody aboard 259 mostly Americans including 35 college students who finished a semester abroad program in London and 11 people on the ground in the Scottish village of Lockerbie. If the plane had taken off on time, the explosion would have occurred in the waters on the darkest day of the year.
While the book does a nice job in reaching it's target audience, you won't find a lot of other information here. I would have suggested a list of the passengers, flight crew, and the people lost in Lockerbie, Scotland to bring an understanding as the insurmountable loss. Until September 11, 2001, Pan Am 103 was the deadliest terrorist attack on America. Last year was the 20th memorial and sadly it was not getting enough attention. The irony is that if we had followed the advice and suggestions from the Pan Am 103 disaster, maybe September 11, 2001's terroristic attacks on New York City, Washington D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania would have been averted or prevented and saving thousands of lives.
There was one major change in the airline industry, it was to match suitcases with flying passengers as standard procedure to prevent another catrastrophe. The bomb in the suitcase aboard Pan Am 103 was so small that it was nearly undetectable even with the metal detectors. There were the Helsinki warning about a Pan Am flight from Frankfurt to New York that was going to be blown up by terrorists. The warning was only sent to American diplomats at the American embassies.
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