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Thirteen minutes after the explosion, Peterson landed his plane safely, to the cheers and applause of his passengers and crew. Though he later described the operation as a "normal emergency landing," Peterson admitted that he had been concerned in the last minutes of flight because "you wonder if you have your brakes and your hydraulic system." He continued, "Even though it shows on the instruments, you never know. That's why people clapped when we touched down. They were glad, as we were, to be on the ground." Among the 118 survivors, none needed to be told how lucky they were that the explosion had not damaged any of the plane's vital systems. If the bomb had gone off ten minutes earlier, while the craft was still flying at its cruising altitude of 29,000 ft., the loss of pressure would have caused a far more serious explosion.
The bomb aboard Flight 840 took only four lives, far fewer than the 166 people who died two days earlier when a Mexican jetliner crashed into a mountainside in central Mexico, but it was one of the most chilling episodes in the generation-old saga of airborne terrorism. The bombing demonstrated that neither governments nor airlines have yet found the means to make air travelers safe from terrorist attacks (see box).
Nor was there any sense that the war against terrorism was being won on the ground. At week's end a bomb went off in a West Berlin nightclub, killing an American soldier and a West German woman and injuring more than 150 people. Responsibility was claimed by the Holger Meins Commando, which is linked to the Red Army Faction and had previously asserted that it was responsible for the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in Stockholm in February.
Over the Mediterranean, TWA flies daily between Rome, Athens and Cairo. The 727 on which the bombing occurred last Wednesday had started the day in Cairo, stopped at Athens and proceeded to Rome. There it picked up its passengers, most of whom had arrived on a connecting TWA 747 flight from Los Angeles and New York, and took off for a return trip to Athens. Aviation authorities in Athens quickly established that the bomb had not been placed in the luggage compartment but had been carried aboard and put beneath seat 10-F, possibly in the life preserver. This was the seat in which Passenger Ospino had been sitting at the time of the explosion.
After months of complaints about their security arrangements, officials in Rome, Athens and Cairo were adamant in insisting they had followed existing procedures scrupulously. The U.S. agrees that security at all three airports is much improved. Before Flight 840 left Rome last week, it was inspected by a private security firm, Flashpol, and crew members said they had checked beneath the seats and had done a "spot check" of some, but not all, of the 146 life preservers aboard.