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By now it was night. Without the help of ground navigational aids, the two planes groped their way toward the field. Gaza One found it first. Captain Wood guided in his craft by Jeep headlights and flaming oil drums strung out in a line. The British had never used Dawson's strip to land a plane that weighed more than a fraction of the 707's 180,000 Ibs. Ever so lightly, Wood brought the 707 down, down, until its huge wheels skimmed along the packed sand and began to turn. Then he eased the wheel forward and set the plane down on the baked desert crust. It held. Gaza One had safely landed at "Revolution Airstrip."
Nice Fellas
Forty minutes later, Haifa One started its descent into the darkness. As soon as his DC-8 touched down, Swissair Captain Fritz Schreiber hit the brakes and applied full reverse thrust on the four engines, raising a cloud of desert dust and sand, which was sucked into the ventilation system. "The cabin was filling up with cloudy stuff that smelted like smoke," recalled Cecily Simmon of Utica, N.Y. "You could hardly breathe." Many passengers leaped through emergency doors before it became evident that there was no fire. When the dust settled, the Swissair passengers saw the reason for the fast stop. The DC-8 had come to rest not more than 50 yards from Gaza One.
Meanwhile, another aerial drama was under way. Back in Amsterdam, the two "Senegalese" who had been denied passage by El Al had bought first-class tickets on Pan American's Flight 93, a 747. As Clipper 93 taxied toward its takeoff position, ground controllers—whom El Al had alerted about the attempted hijacking of its craft and about the suspicious passengers it had bumped off its flight and onto Pan American—radioed a warning to Captain Jack Priddy. He halted the 747 and walked through the passenger compartment looking for the pair. When he finally found them, they readily agreed to be frisked on the spot. "They seemed like nice fellas," says Priddy. "I'm no professional, but I went over their bodies and hand luggage fairly closely."
He found nothing; they had hidden their weapons under the seats. Flight 93 had just leveled off at 28,000 ft. when one of the men forced his way into the cockpit and held a revolver on Priddy. The hijackers then ordered him to fly to Beirut, where airport officials sent radio warnings to the plane that it would be dangerous for the giant aircraft to attempt a landing on a runway that had not been reinforced to bear the 500,000 lbs. of the immense 747. "My brother, this plane is not like a 707 —it requires better facilities to land," pleaded one Beirut air controller. The hijackers remained adamant, and Priddy put the plane down without incident.