Indian flight attendant. Heroic flight attendants who fulfilled their duty to the end (7 photos). "attack! he's armed!"

Nirya Bhanot was a simple Indian girl growing up with two brothers in the family of a journalist and a housewife in Mumbai.

The beautiful girl was noticed by a modeling agency and invited to work with her.

While working as a model, she applied for and got the job at Pan American World Airways, which was looking to hire Indian employees for flights from Frankfurt to Mumbai.

Bganot was the senior flight attendant on Pan Am Flight 73, which flew from Mumbai to New York with stops in Karachi and Frankfurt. The plane was hijacked on September 5, 1986 by four armed men at Karachi Airport in Pakistan. At that time, there were 361 passengers and 19 crew members on the plane. The terrorists wanted to fly to Cyprus to free the Palestinian prisoners held there.

Bganot warned the pilots that terrorists had boarded the plane. Upon learning of this, the pilot, co-pilot and flight engineer left the aircraft on the runway through the cockpit overhead hatch. After the pilots escaped, Nirya found herself senior in rank among the remaining crew members and took responsibility for what was happening on the plane.

The raiders were members of the Abu Nidal Organization and their main goal saw US citizens. They managed to identify one American, whom they dragged to the exit, shot and threw the body on runway. They then instructed Bganot to collect the passports of all the passengers so that they could find out which of them were American. Nirya and the other flight attendants hid 41 American passports under the seats and in the trash.

17 hours after the hijacking, the hijackers started shooting. Bganot opened the emergency exit and began helping the passengers get out. According to one of the surviving passengers: “She directed passengers to the emergency exit, while the terrorists constantly shot, fearing that the security forces would attack the plane. Seeing that Nirya was trying to help the passengers, they grabbed her by the hair and shot her at point-blank range.”

She was killed trying to protect three American children from bullets. Of all the American passengers on board, two were killed.

The boy whom Nirya covered with her body became a pilot and now works in major airline. He said that Bganot has always been an example to him and that he remembers that he owes her every day of his life.

In addition to saving 359 of the 379 hostages on board, Bganot also prevented the plane from taking off.

Nirya Bganot became the youngest recipient of the Ashoka Chakra Award, India's most prestigious award for bravery and heroism in Peaceful time.

Posthumously, she received several awards from the US government for courage and Pakistan's Tamgha-e-Insaniyat for human kindness.

Nirya died two days before her 23rd birthday.

Nirya Bganot

Before the ill-fated flight, Nirya’s mother tried to persuade her to take a day off because she had been working on a modeling project all day the day before. But the responsible girl decided not to let her colleagues down.

This was the first case of capture of such a scale in the USSR. passenger plane(hijacking). With him, in essence, began a long-term series of similar tragedies that splattered the skies of the whole world with the blood of innocent people.

And it all started like this.

The An-24 took to the skies from the Batumi airfield on October 15, 1970 at 12:30 p.m. Heading to Sukhumi. There were 46 passengers and 5 crew members on board the plane. Flight time according to schedule is 25-30 minutes.

But life has ruined both the schedule and the schedule.

At the 4th minute of the flight, the plane sharply deviated from its course. The radio operators asked for the board, but there was no response. Communication with the control tower was interrupted. The plane was leaving towards nearby Turkey.

Military and rescue boats went out to sea. Their captains received orders: to proceed at full speed to the site of a possible disaster.

The board did not respond to any of the requests. A few more minutes - and the An-24 left air space THE USSR. And in the sky above the Turkish coastal airfield of Trabzon, two rockets flashed - red, then green. It was a signal emergency landing. The plane touched the concrete pier of a foreign air harbor. Telegraph agencies around the world immediately reported: a Soviet passenger plane had been hijacked. The flight attendant was killed and some were wounded. All.

BLACK ENVELOPE

I was flying to the scene of the emergency a few hours later. I flew without knowing either the circumstances of the drama or the name of the murdered flight attendant. Everything had to be found out on the spot.

Today, 45 years later, I intend to again - at least briefly - outline the events of those days and again talk about Nadya Kurchenko, her courage and her heroism. To talk about the stunning reaction of millions of people of the so-called stagnant time to the sacrifice, courage, courage of man. To tell about this, first of all, to people of the new generation, the new computer consciousness, to tell how it was, because my generation remembers and knows this story, and most importantly - Nadya Kurchenko - and without reminders. And it would be useful for young people to know why many streets, schools, Mountain peaks and even the plane bears her name.

After takeoff, greetings and instructions to passengers, the flight attendant returned to her work area, a narrow compartment. She opened a bottle of Borjomi and, letting the water shoot with sparkling tiny cannonballs, filled four plastic cups for the crew. Having placed them on the tray, she entered the cabin.

The crew was always glad to have a beautiful, young, extremely friendly girl in the cockpit. She probably felt this attitude towards herself and, of course, she was happy too. Perhaps, even in this dying hour, she thought with warmth and gratitude about each of these guys, who easily accepted her into their professional and friendly circle. They treated her like a little sister, with care and trust.

Of course, Nadya was in a wonderful mood - everyone who saw her in the last minutes of her pure, happy life affirmed.

After giving the crew a drink, she returned to her compartment. At that moment the bell rang: one of the passengers called the flight attendant. She came up. The passenger said:

Tell it urgently to the commander,” and handed her an envelope.

"ATTACK! HE'S ARMED!"

Nadya took the envelope. Their gazes must have met. She was probably surprised by the tone in which these words were spoken. But she didn’t find out anything, but stepped towards the luggage compartment door - then there was the pilot’s cabin door. Probably, Nadya's feelings were written on her face - most likely. And the sensitivity of the wolf, alas, surpasses any other. And, probably, it was precisely thanks to this sensitivity that the terrorist saw hostility, subconscious suspicion, a shadow of danger in Nadya’s eyes. This was enough for the sick imagination to sound the alarm: failure, verdict, exposure. His self-control failed: he literally ejected from his chair and rushed after Nadya.

She only managed to take a step towards the pilot's cabin when he opened the door to her compartment, which she had just closed.

You can't go here! - she screamed.

But he approached like the shadow of an animal. She realized: there was an enemy in front of her. The next second, he also realized: she would ruin all plans.

Nadya screamed again:

Return to your seat. You can't go here!

But he took out a weapon - his nerves burned to the ground. Nadya did not know his intentions. But I understood: he is absolutely dangerous. Dangerous for the crew, dangerous for the passengers.

She saw the revolver clearly.

Opening the cockpit, she shouted to the crew with all her might:

Attack! He's armed!

And at the same moment, slamming the cabin door, she turned to face the bandit, furious with this course of affairs, and prepared to attack. He, like the crew members, heard her words - without a doubt.

What was left to do? Nadya made a decision: not to let the attacker into the cockpit at any cost. Any!

FIGHT AT THE LAST FRONTIER

He could have been a maniac and shot the crew. It could have killed the crew and passengers. He could... She didn't know his actions, his intentions. And he knew: by jumping towards her, he tried to knock her off her feet. Pressing her hands against the wall, Nadya held on and continued to resist.

The first bullet hit her in the thigh. She pressed herself even tighter against the pilot's door. The terrorist tried to squeeze her throat. Nadya - knock the weapon out of his right hand. A stray bullet hit the ceiling. Nadya fought back with her feet, hands, even her head.

The crew assessed the situation instantly. The commander abruptly interrupted the right turn in which they were at the moment of the attack, and immediately rolled the roaring car to the left, and then to the right. The next second the plane went steeply upward: the pilots tried to knock down the attacker, believing that he had little experience in this matter, but Nadya would hold on.

The passengers were still wearing seat belts - after all, the display did not go out, the plane was just gaining altitude.

The young man opened his gray cloak, and the passengers saw grenades - they were tied to his belt. “This is for you!” he shouted. “If anyone else gets up, we’ll split the plane!”

In the cabin, seeing a passenger rushing to the cabin and hearing the first shot, several people instantly unfastened their seat belts and jumped out of their seats. Two of them were closest to the place where the criminal was sitting, and were the first to sense trouble. Galina Kiryak and Aslan Kaishanba, however, did not have time to take a step: they were ahead of them by the one who was sitting next to the one who had fled into the cabin. The young bandit - and he was much younger than the first, for they turned out to be father and son - pulled out a sawn-off shotgun and fired along the cabin. The bullet whistled over the heads of the shocked passengers.

Don `t move! - he yelled. - Do not move!

The pilots began to throw the plane from one position to another with even greater sharpness. The young man fired again. The bullet pierced the fuselage skin and came out right through. Depressurization aircraft not yet threatening - the height was insignificant.

The moment after the second shot, the young man opened his gray cloak and people saw grenades - they were tied to his belt.

This is for you! - he shouted. “If anyone else gets up, we’ll split the plane!”

It was obvious that this was not an empty threat - if they failed, they had nothing to lose.

Meanwhile, despite the evolution of the plane, the elder remained on his feet and with bestial fury tried to tear Nadya away from the door of the pilot's cabin. He needed a commander. He needed a crew. He needed a plane.

Struck by Nadya’s incredible resistance, enraged by his own powerlessness to cope with the wounded, bloodied, fragile girl, he, without aiming, without thinking for a second, fired at point-blank range and, throwing the desperate defender of the crew and passengers into the corner of a narrow passage, burst into the cabin. Behind him is his geek with a sawed-off shotgun.

To Turkey! To Turkey! Return to the Soviet shore - we'll blow up the plane!

42 BULLETS ON THE CREW

Another bullet pierced the back of the commander, Grigory Chakhrakiy. In order to keep at least a little blood in his body, so as not to lose consciousness and not drop the steering wheel from his hands, Grigory pressed himself against the back of the command chair with all his might. The next shot - the bullet paralyzes the right arm of navigator Valery Fadeev and hits the chest. There is a communication microphone in his hand, Fadeev loses consciousness, no one can unclench his hand with the microphone - each of the crew members is already wounded, Nadya is dead.

There is no way out: the plane must not fall into the sea - there are 46 passengers on board, including children. The co-pilot sees that the commander is still losing consciousness. Shavidze takes control - he drives the car as if in a nightmare: in a cabin drenched in the blood of his friends, among screaming criminals, under the threat of a sawn-off shotgun and a revolver, under the threat of grenades.

When a coastal Turkish airfield appears in the gray dream of reality, it fires emergency flares into the sky. And the plane, pierced by forty-two bullets, falls to someone else's hard ground...

A LOOK THROUGH THE YEARS


WHILE HOPE LIVES...

For courage and heroism, Nadezhda Kurchenko was awarded the Military Order of the Red Banner; a passenger plane, an asteroid, schools, streets, and so on were named after Nadya. But it should be said, apparently, about something else.

The scale of government and public actions related to the unprecedented event was enormous. Members of the State Commission and the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs negotiated with the Turkish authorities for several days in a row without a single break.

It was necessary to: allocate an air corridor for the return of the hijacked plane; air corridor to transport wounded crew members and those passengers who needed urgent treatment from Trabzon hospitals medical care; of course, those who were not physically harmed, but found themselves in a foreign land not of their own free will; an air corridor was required for a special flight from Trabzon to Sukhumi with Nadya’s body. Her mother was already flying to Sukhumi from Udmurtia.

There were a lot of worries. But all these dramatic actions could not smooth out the acute pain of loss - Nadya remained at the center of any conversation across the vast country, television and radio programs, and newspapers.

Air Marshal, Minister of civil aviation USSR Boris Pavlovich Bugaev. Twice - due to circumstances - I spoke on the phone with the minister, who listened to wishes, advice, requests to meet Nadya’s mother in Sukhumi, to decide on the place of the funeral, and other actions. Could there be something similar in our hectic days - the concern of the minister of a superpower about the fate of the murdered flight attendant of a tiny run-of-the-mill flight?

No. It couldn't. In any case, I don’t believe in it.

In Komsomolskaya Pravda, where I worked then (and was the first and only journalist from Moscow at the scene of the tragedy), in the first two weeks alone, even after the reports distorted by censorship, over 12 thousand letters and telegrams arrived from shocked readers mourning Nadya and admiring her courage !

There was such a country. And there were such people. Is this possible today?

On the day of Nadya’s funeral, over her coffin littered with flowers and over the heads of thousands of people walking behind her coffin through the streets of the city, all the planes leaving for the flight swayed their wings, showing tribute to their protector, their young colleague, their heroine. On each of these planes, flight attendants tearfully told their passengers:

Look down while the city is visible. These are people saying goodbye to our friend. With our Nadya.

Do you believe that we are still the same?

Nadya’s mother, Henrietta Ivanovna, with whom I stood at Nadya’s coffin and who dryly and lifelessly repeated, looking at her daughter’s strikingly beautiful face: “Now you don’t laugh with me, you’re serious with me,” handed me notes, notebooks, and Nadya’s papers. Among them, I found a phrase from 9th grade student Nadezhda Kurchenko: “I want to be a worthy daughter of the Motherland and am ready to give my life for it, if necessary.”

I absolutely believe in these words, familiar to the ear, but written by Nadya’s hand and heart.

PAY


The bandits punished themselves

The terrorists turned out to be 46-year-old Lithuanian Pranas Brazinskas (pictured on the right), a former store manager from Vilnius, and his 13-year-old son Algirdas (left). The Turkish authorities refused to extradite the criminals to the USSR and convicted them themselves. The eldest received eight years, the youngest - two. After some time, both were released under an amnesty, and the bandits moved to Venezuela, and from there to the United States: they got off a plane in New York heading to Canada. The Lithuanian diaspora obtained permission to leave them in the country.

The Brazinskas settled in Santa Monica, California. In February 2002, 77-year-old Pranas quarreled with his son, for which he received several fatal blows with a bat. Algirdas was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

1973 The ballad “My Clear Little Star” flew around the Soviet Union like a dove. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind: the song was dedicated to the young flight attendant who remained in the sky forever. Killed three weeks before the wedding. And it is performed on behalf of her groom. The sad story is still being replicated on the Internet. However, this is just a beautiful legend...

Composer Vladimir Semenov: “Many people sang and continue to sing this song. But it seems to me that its best performer was and remains Sasha Losev...” Soloist of a student amateur ensemble, winner of a regional competition, where the main prize is the recording of his own record at the Melodiya company ...

The tragic aura that the song acquired, 22 years later, covered its first performer with a black cloud. Shortly before his departure, Losev admitted that before he sang “My Clear Little Star” with one subtext, now - in memory of his early deceased son. And he summed it up sadly: “Inexplicably, the main song in the program became the main song in life.”

“Zvezdochka” became the main song in the life of composer Vladimir Semyonov. He was already 35 years old. Behind me is Astrakhan, an automobile and road technical school, a homemade electric guitar and hundreds of kilometers on a tattered bus traveling with concert teams of the Astrakhan Philharmonic...

“Of course, I remember the story of the plane hijacking, then they wrote a lot about Nadya’s feat,” says Semenov. “But, to be honest, I didn’t think about anything like that when I took out a small collection of poems from the store shelf by the Vologda poetess Olga Fokina. Literally 12- 13 pages printed on thin newsprint. I started leafing through them and suddenly came across the words “People have different songs, but mine is the same for centuries.”

A song was born that Semenov showed to his friend, composer Sergei Dyachkov. He brought Semenov to Stas Namin, who led the vocal and instrumental ensemble. We recorded a small record consisting of three compositions - Oscar Feltsman's song "Flowers Have Eyes", Sergei Dyachkov's song "Don't" and Vladimir Semyonov's ballad "My Clear Star". It spread across the country with a circulation of almost 7 million copies!

“After all the hassle - rehearsals, recordings - I went with my wife to relax in Sochi,” recalls composer Vladimir Semenov today. “I was lying on the sand and suddenly I heard something familiar - somewhere in the distance a motor ship was passing, a huge, foreign tourist one, and from there I could hear Sasha Losev's voice: “People have different songs, but mine is one for centuries!”

Vologda poetess Olga Fokina wrote these lines several years before the tragedy on board the An-24. Lines about your own, very personal things. Her famous fellow countryman, writer Fyodor Abramov said that Olga “is very close to life, her poems are always not fiction, not letters, not words - poems are generated by life itself... they captivate, enchant you with sincerity, purity and spontaneity of feelings.” .

All the things that Nadya Kurchenko was remembered for and will forever remain in the people’s memory.

), which, saving the passengers of flight 73 of the company Pan Am, died at the hands of terrorists who hijacked a plane on September 5, 1986. She became the youngest person to be awarded the Ashoka Chakra Order, India's highest award for courage shown in peacetime (awarded posthumously).

Neerja Bhanot (Lado)
नीरजा भनोट

Date of Birth September 7(1963-09-07 )
Place of Birth Chandigarh, India
Date of death September 5(1986-09-05 ) (22 years old)
A place of death
  • Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan
A country
Occupation stewardess
Father Harish Bhanot
Mother Rama Bhanot
Awards and prizes

Biography

Neerja Bhanot was born on September 7, 1963 in Chandigarh. Her father was Mumbai-based journalist Harisha and mother Rama Bhanot.

Neerja is a graduate of Sacred Heart High School. Then she studied in Mumbai. She worked as a model for some time. She was noticed as soon as she turned sixteen. She has been a spokesperson for many famous brands.

Family

Nirja Bhanot was survived by two siblings - Akhil ( Akhil) and Anish ( Aneesh).

Her father, Harish Bhanot, worked as a journalist for the Hindustan Times newspaper for more than 30 years; he passed away on 1 January 2008 at the age of 86 in Chandigarh.

Memory

Neerja Bhanot's feat received international recognition. In India, she was posthumously awarded the Ashoka Chakra Order and became the youngest recipient of this order - the most prestigious of the Indian state awards, awarded for courage and heroism in peacetime.

Her devotion to the passengers of the plane who found themselves in terrible trouble will forever remain the highest manifestation of the best qualities of the human spirit.

Original text (English)

Her loyalties to the passengers of the aircraft in distress will forever be a lasting tribute to the finest qualities of the human spirit

In 2004, India Post (English) Russian issued a postage stamp in her memory

Neerja Bhanot was born on September 7, 1963 in Chandigarh (India). Her father worked as a journalist.

Apparently, due to his line of work, the family moved to Mumbai (then Bombay). Here the girl graduated from high school.

From the age of 16, the future heroine worked as a model and represented many famous brands. In March 1985, her parents married her off. As it happens in India, by agreement. But the husband turned out to be picky: he didn’t like the dowry, and two months later he brought his wife back.

An unsuccessful marriage brought Neerja to the Pan American office. She successfully passed the preliminary selection process and was hired as a senior flight attendant.

On that ill-fated day, Bhanot served passengers on flight RA 73. The plane took off from Mumbai and landed in Karachi at 5:00. Four radical Islamists stormed the plane and took passengers and crew hostage.

Nirja immediately distinguished herself by her reaction speed: she instantly warned the pilots, and they escaped through the emergency hatch.

Then the young girl witnessed a monstrous massacre. The terrorists shot at everyone who called themselves an American. They then demanded passports to see if any US citizens were still alive. Neerja distinguished herself again: she hid the documents in the garbage chute. Thanks to her brave step, no one else was killed.

When the Pakistani police began storming the plane, Bhanot took advantage of the chaos to evacuate all the passengers. She was not embarrassed by bullets flying past and exploding grenades.


As she was about to leave the aircraft, the flight attendant turned around one last time. And I noticed 3 children - they were hiding behind the seats and were afraid to go out.

The girl hurried to pick them up. Unfortunately, terrorists noticed her and opened fire. Brave Neerja covered the children with her body. She was mortally wounded, but she still evacuated these passengers. And after that she died...

As you know, one of the rescued boys grew up and became a pilot.


Neerja Bhanot was posthumously awarded the Ashoka Chakra Order, India's highest award for bravery. The girl is the youngest of all who have been awarded it.

A story that left a huge sadness in my soul! The whole world should know about Neerja’s courage. Share this post with your friends!

 

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