Thirty Years On

On December 21, 1988, a bomb hidden in a cassette player inside a suitcase exploded in a baggage compartment of Pan Am Flight 103, enroute for New York (JFK) from London. The flight was supposed to be out over the Atlantic, but rerouting took it to the north. It blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland. The airplane, a 747, crashed. All 259 people on board were killed. 11 residents of Lockerbie were killed in explosions and fire from falling debris.

Libya paid nearly $3 billion in compensation for the bombing.