Millions around the world watched their television sets or listened to their radios as the horrific drama unfolded. "He has pulled a hand-grenade pin and is ready to blow up the aircraft if he has to. We must, I repeat, we must land at Beirut. We must land at Beirut. No alternative." After much delay, the curious, grudging reply of the Beirut control tower: "Very well. Land. Land quietly. Land quietly." Then another desperate plea: "They are beating the passengers. They are threatening to kill the passengers. We want fuel now. Immediately. Five minutes at most, or he is going to kill the passengers." After that, another, more excited, more hostile voice, in broken English: "The plane is booby-trapped. If anyone approaches, we will blow it up. Either refueling the plane or blowing it up. No alternative."
After airport authorities complied, the stricken plane took off from Beirut, where it had landed after having been hijacked out of Athens. Hours later, it landed in Algiers, then took off again and returned late that night to Beirut, the tension rising, the crew bone-weary. And minutes after landing, the senseless slaying of a hostage, and a harsh voice over the plane's radio: "You see? You now believe it. There will be another in five minutes," and the nightmare rolled on.
In the beginning, the hijackers were outnumbered by their captives 153 to 2, and U.S. authorities tended to believe that the terrorists would soon be overwhelmed by exhaustion if nothing else. By Sunday morning, however, with the plane on the ground in Algiers, the ranks of the hijackers had swelled to between twelve and 15, and all but 32 male American passengers and crewmen had been released (another passenger was later freed in order to receive medical treatment). The gunmen set a 10 a.m. deadline (5 a.m. E.D.T.) for their demands to be met, but then inexplicably left Algiers more than an hour ahead of time. Once again, their destination was Beirut. On landing there, they demanded the release of 50 fellow Shi'ite Muslims currently detained in Israel; such a gesture was justified, the hijackers said, by their freeing of three American men the night before in Algiers. The terrorists had been seeking the release of 700 Shi'ites from Israeli custody, and this appeared to be the first step in realizing that goal. If Israel and presumably the U.S. ) balked, declared the hijackers, "our blood will be a witness."
Tension and deep fatigue had marked the TWA jetliner's third arrival at Beirut. Not only was the crew frazzled, but the plane was thought to be in need of maintenance. Beirut authorities had again tried to refuse permission to land, but had been overruled by the hijackers and by a desperate-sounding pilot who said he had only five minutes' worth of fuel. Even as he prepared to land, Shi'ite militiamen around the airport fired their weapons out to sea, at what they said was an Israeli gunboat. The lives of remaining passengers and crew were obviously still in danger. But particularly disturbing was the news that on the plane's second stop in Beirut the previous night, some six or eight passengers with Jewish-sounding surnames had been hastily removed from the aircraft in the darkness. In effect, this meant that the well-organized hijackers had created a hostage crisis within a hostage crisis, and there was no end in sight.