Bojinka Plot - Test Bombs: Mall, Theater, 747 Airliner

Test Bombs: Mall, Theater, 747 Airliner

His first operational test of his bomb was inside a mall in Cebu City. The bomb detonated several hours after Yousef put it in a generator room. It caused minor damage, but it proved to Yousef that his bomb was workable.

On December 1, Shah placed a bomb under a seat in the Greenbelt Theatre in Manila to test what would happen if a bomb exploded under an airline seat. The bomb went off, injuring several patrons.

On December 11, 1994, Yousef built another bomb, which had one tenth of the power that his final bombs were planned to have, in the lavatory of an aircraft. He left it inside the life jacket under his seat (26 K) and got off the plane when it arrived in Cebu. Yousef had boarded the flight under the assumed name of Arnaldo Forlani, using a false Italian passport. The aircraft was Philippine Airlines Flight 434 on a Manila to Narita route, stopping partway at Cebu. Yousef had set the timer for four hours after he got off the aircraft.

The bomb exploded while the aircraft was over Minami Daito Island, near Okinawa, Japan. A Japanese businessman named Haruki Ikegami occupying the seat was killed and an additional 10 passengers were injured. The flight was carrying 273 passengers in total. The blast blew a hole in the floor and the cabin's rapid decompression severed several control cables in the ceiling, cutting off control of the plane's right aileron, as well as both the pilot and first officer's steering controls. Usually, 26K, the seat that he chose to plant the bomb was positioned directly over the centre fuel tank, and the detonation of the bomb would have caused a crippling explosion, but on this particular "SAS" model, the seat was two rows forward from normal. The flight crew kept control of the Boeing 747-200 and brought it into an emergency landing in Naha, Okinawa. Satisfied with the deadly results of the attack, Yousef then planned which flights to attack for Phase I.