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Back in the U.S., some worried relatives had learned of the hijacking only hours before they had intended to go to the airport to welcome travelers home. Against a backdrop of yellow ribbons and flickering candles, parishioners of three Catholic churches in the Chicago area spent the day praying, huddling around radios and exchanging bits of information. They were cheered by the news that many of their 24 friends had been released in Beirut or Algiers. "We're waiting, we're praying, we're hoping," said the Rev. Robert Garrity of St. Margaret Mary Church in Algonquin, where parishioners maintained an all-night vigil.
Elsewhere, reactions were much the same. "I just hope they're not beating people, like they say they are," said Pete Lazansky of Tulsa, whose parents were on board. Other passengers included Kathryn Davis and her fiance James Hoskins Jr., both 22 and from Indianapolis, whose parents had given them European vacations as college graduation presents. "I was going to pick her up this evening," said Stockbroker Stephen Davis of his daughter. "We just sit here and wait." In Florissant, Mo., Katharine Ellerbrock tuned in a morning TV show and realized that she was listening to the recorded voice of her brother, Flight Engineer Benjamin Zimmerman, talking to the Beirut control tower. She said her brother, who manages to be both a full-time TWA pilot and a Lutheran pastor with a ministry in the mountains of Idaho, was "strong, steady and stable" and "has got to be a comfort to the passengers." In Richmond, Mo., a small town northeast of Kansas City, friends and neighbors stayed up to follow the ordeal of Captain Testrake, who in his spare time raises horses, restores small antique planes and nurtures a recently planted vineyard on his nearby farm. "He's been an airman for a long time," said Howard Hill, editor of the Richmond Daily News. "He won't panic."
One of the most troubling aspects of the plight of Flight 847 was that it was the third hijacking that occurred in the region within three days last week, and the second apparently engineered by Lebanese Shi'ites. In earlier times, Arab skyjackers tended to be Palestinians, from one or another faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, attempting to advance or at least dramatize the Palestinian cause. The politicization of Lebanon's Shi'ite Muslim community is one of the most significant and most troubling consequences of the Israeli invasion.
The week's first hijacking had begun on Tuesday, when half a dozen Shi'ites stormed aboard a Jordanian-owned Boeing 727 at Beirut airport. They overpowered eight Jordanian security guards, then ordered the Swedish pilot to fly to Larnaca, Cyprus.
Over the next 28 hours, as the plane bounced around the eastern half of the Mediterranean, the skyjackers had ample time to air their complaints. They were angry about an Arab League statement supporting the cause of the Palestinians in the Beirut refugee camps, which have been under attack by Lebanese Shi'ites for the past three weeks. The Shi'ites want to drive out the Palestinians to make sure that the P.L.O. will never again be able to set up a "state within a state" in Lebanon. After several dire threats, the hijackers freed the passengers, blew up the plane and sped off in a Range Rover, disappearing into the Shi'ite neighborhoods near the airport.