On September 11, 2001, Korean Air Flight 85, was a Korean Air flight en route to Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage, Alaska ordered to land in Whitehorse, Canada because controllers thought it was hijacked. It was thought to be hijacked because the airline received a text message with "HJK" and the pilots did not say "disregard we are not 7500/hijacked" when ordered to squawk 7500.
Due to a number of factors, the plane was considered by authorities to be a potential hijacked aircraft and was authorized by American officials and the Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien to be shot down. The pilots of the civil airliner cooperated and the 747 was forced by American F-15 military jets to land in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada.
Read more about Korean Air Flight 85: Incident, Operation Yellow Ribbon
Famous quotes containing the words air and/or flight:
“After us they’ll fly in hot air balloons, coat styles will change, perhaps they’ll discover a sixth sense and cultivate it, but life will remain the same, a hard life full of secrets, but happy. And a thousand years from now man will still be sighing, “Oh! Life is so hard!” and will still, like now, be afraid of death and not want to die.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“No Raven’s wing can stretch the flight so far
As the torn bandrols of Napoleon’s war.
Choose then your climate, fix your best abode,
He’ll make you deserts and he’ll bring you blood.
How could you fear a dearth? have not mankind,
Tho slain by millions, millions left behind?
Has not conscription still the power to weild
Her annual faulchion o’er the human field?
A faithful harvester!”
—Joel Barlow (1754–1812)