History of S’pore: The SIA 117 Hijack That Occurred in 1991

Last Updated on 2023-03-13 , 10:42 am

On the early morning of 27 March 1991, when there was no Internet, Facebook or Twitter, something disastrous happened in Changi Airport that many were only aware of until the morning after when they watched the news.

Maybe you weren’t even born yet, but there’s a piece of history that is pretty useful for us to know. At 9:15 p.m. on 26 March 1991, Singapore Airlines Flight 117 took off from KL, leaving for Singapore.

It was a short flight and once the aeroplane was within cruising attitude, four men suddenly went to the toilet. They then emerged out from the toilet and told the passengers and crew that it was a hijack, demanding that the plane be flown to Sydney, Australia.

They were holding explosives and knives. By the time the hijackers got into the cockpit, the plane was in Singapore’s airspace and the pilot had reported the hijack to the control tower.

Within minutes, a number of civil servants were activated: the police, the Special Operations Force (SOF) from the Commando formation, and an executive group of officials from various ministries.

Without enough fuel to reach Australia, the hijackers demanded the plane to land on Changi Airport and be refuelled. The police negotiators then started to talk to the hijackers, who demanded two main things: fly the plane to Australia and to release several prisoners from Pakistan prison.

As the Singapore authorities had no power to make any decisions on foreign lands, they tried to buy time by continuing to negotiate with the hijackers. During that time, the SOF had already been activated and were ready to storm the plane.

Police special operations forces were surrounding the plane with their rifles pointed at the plane, providing information about the activity in and outside the plane. The executive group had not given the go-ahead for the storming as it could have serious repercussions based on past storming of hijacked planes in other countries.

They were looking to settle it in a peaceful manner, and to gather as much information as possible. Somewhere during the negotiation period, the hijackers left the cockpit, allowing the pilot to converse with the control tower privately.

During this period, the police immediately sent instructions to the pilot, and got him to assess the situation and provide coded messages back to the control tower. When the hijackers’ demands were not met, they grabbed one air steward and threw him off the plane, thinking that he had died from the fall.

However, what they didn’t realise was this: the police officers that were surrounding the plane saw what happened and went forward to save him. And the hijackers had unknowingly disclosed two pieces of vital information: firstly, that particular door was not rigged with an explosive and secondly, the situation in the aeroplane provided by the air steward.

When the hijackers got more frustrated, they threw another air steward out (he, too, survived and validated the information passed from the first victim). The executive group allowed the plane to be refuelled, but would need to move the plane to a different location.

The pilot then proceeded to move the plane, and those police officers gave chase on foot. After the first round of refueling, police negotiators then told the hijackers that the fuel was not enough, and required more.

The hijackers then lost their temper and threatened to kill one passenger every ten minutes. That was then the executive group gave the go-ahead to storm the plane: they had the information they needed.

Those highly trained officers then grabbed ladders and climbed up to the door that they knew was safe to enter. During this process, the police negotiators were distracting the hijackers, even using their language so as to throw them off-guard.

The SOF then stormed in, and according to the passengers, they were shooting and shooting and shooting. They then reached the cockpit and fired at the hijacker. The leader of the hijackers stood up after five or six shots to his chest, and the SOF took out a pistol and shot him dead.

The entire storming took only 30 seconds, and all hijackers were killed and all passengers were safe. This entire operation was aptly named Operation Thunderbolt.

It was initially mentioned that the team who stormed the plane was from the Commando formation, but a few years later, it was revealed that the highly trained team was an elite special counter-terrorist force that was formed in 1985.