Larnaca International Airport - Incidents and Accidents

Incidents and Accidents

• On 13 October 1977, Lufthansa Flight 181 flying from Palma de Mallorca to Frankfurt with 91 passengers and crew was hijacked by four Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) members, and was diverted and landed in turn at the airports in Rome, Larnaca, Bahrain and Dubai. The Boeing 737 was then forced to fly on to Mogadishu Airport, Somalia, where a German antiterrorist squad stormed the plane, killing 3 hijackers, arresting one and rescuing all passengers.
• On 19 February 1978, Larnaca Airport was the scene of a 1-hour gun battle between Unit 777, an Egyptian military counter-terrorism force, who had raided Larnaca International, and the Cypriot National Guard.

The crisis had begun the previous day, when Youssef Sebai, editor of a prominent Egyptian newspaper and friend of Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat, was assassinated at the Nicosia Hilton hotel by two gunmen. Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) members then hijacked a Cyprus Airways DC-8 plane taking several Egyptian hostages. They forced the plane to approach several countries including Libya, Syria and Djibouti, but each time their request to land was refused, so the plane was forced to return to Larnaca Airport. Egypt then dispatched its entire antiterrorist squad aboard a C-130 Hercules to deal with the hijacking; however, doing so without the consent of the Cypriot government. On landing in Larnaca the commandos launched an all-out assault on the DC-8, even as Cypriot negotiators had secured the hostage-takers' surrender. Cypriot President Spyros Kyprianou and other senior officials observing the events on site were forced to retreat from the airport control tower after it was hit by bullets. The crisis ended after the Cypriot National Guard overpowered the Egyptian commandos. 15 members of the 74-man Egyptian anti-terrorist unit died. There were no Cypriot fatalities. President Kyprianou offered reconciliation and apologies, but maintained that Cyprus could not have allowed the Egyptians to act. Frosty diplomatic relations between the two countries persisted for some time. Two Palestinian hijackers were swiftly prosecuted. They received death sentences, later reduced to life imprisonment.

• On 5 April 1988, a Kuwait Airways Boeing 747 (Kuwait Airways Flight 422) was hijacked, while en route from Thailand to Kuwait. After forcing the plane to fly to Iran, the hijackers forced the crew to fly the plane further west to Algeria, but the plane landed in Larnaca for refuelling. Two Kuwaiti hostages were executed by the hijackers and their bodies were thrown out on the airport’s runway. The hijacking ended in Algeria on 20 April 1988.
• Helios Airways Flight 522 (HCY 522 or ZU522) was a Helios Airways Boeing 737–300 flight that crashed into a mountain on 14 August 2005 at 12:04 EEST, north of Marathon and Varnavas, Greece whilst flying from Larnaca, Cyprus. Rescue teams located wreckage near the community of Grammatiko 40 km (25 mi) from Athens. All 121 on board were killed.
• As a result of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon crisis, the Lebanese airline Middle East Airlines evacuated its fleet to Larnaca International Airport.
• Also as a result of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon crisis, a Canadian military aircraft carrying Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Canadian citizens fleeing the war, landed in Larnaca. Cyprus served as a safe haven for many nationals during the crisis. The Prime Minister was coming home from a visit to Afghanistan but landed in Lebanon to pick-up Canadians stranded, and took them back to Canada.
• On 28 August 2007, three construction workers were injured when a complete 5 m × 40 m (16 ft × 130 ft) concrete floor collapsed at the construction site for the new Larnaca International Airport passenger terminal.
• On 11 July 2012, Aeroflot Ilyushin Il-96-300, flight SU 2070 a Russian passenger jet from Moscow to Larnaca, carrying 287 passengers and crew skidded off the runway at Larnaca Airport in Cyprus after a tire blew out during landing. No one was hurt.