Air France Flight 8969

Air France Flight 8969 was an Air France flight that was hijacked on 24 December 1994 by the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) at Algiers, where they killed three passengers, with the intention to blow up the plane over the Eiffel Tower in Paris. When the aircraft reached Marseille, the GIGN, an intervention group of the French Gendarmerie, stormed the plane and killed all four hijackers. The GIA's plan appeared to foreshadow the September 11 attacks. Thomas Sancton of TIME magazine described the event as "one of the most successful anti-terrorist operations in history."

Read more about Air France Flight 8969:  The Flight, Aftermath, Passengers and Crew, The Hijackers, Dramatization

Famous quotes containing the words air, france and/or flight:

    Speak the speech ... trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it ... I had as lief the town crier had spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say the whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    I shall not bring an automobile with me. These inventions infest France almost as much as Bloomer cycling costumes, but they make a horrid racket, and are particularly objectionable. So are the Bloomers. Nothing more abominable has ever been invented. Perhaps the automobile tricycles may succeed better, but I abjure all these works of the devil.
    Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)

    What a cunning mixture of sentiment, pity, tenderness, irony surrounds adolescence, what knowing watchfulness! Young birds on their first flight are hardly so hovered around.
    Georges Bernanos (1888–1948)