On a wing and a prayer FOR FATIMA SECRETS BY LLOYD GORMAN
WHAT HAVE A FORMER MONK FROM PERTH, WA, AN AER LINGUS BOEING 737 AND THE VATICAN GOT IN COMMON? EXACTLY 40 YEARS AGO ON MAY 2nd, THESE THINGS WERE INVOLVED OR IMPLICATED IN ONE OF THE MOST UNUSUAL HIJACKINGS IN AVIATION HISTORY. On that date in 1981, Flight 164 – with 103 passengers and 10 crew – was on a regular lunchtime flight from Dublin to London. The trip was uneventful until the plane was just a few minutes away from landing at Heathrow. A man came out of the toilet – doused in petrol – and carrying what appeared to be two vials which he said was cyanide gas, according to a cabin crew member. The man – Laurence Downey, originally from Western Australia but who was living in Churchtown, South Dublin at the time – demanded the plane be redirected to Tehran because he had drafted a new constitution for Iran and he wanted to deliver it himself. There was nothing about the unassuming man or his manner that suggested what he was going to do next. Passenger Terry McCormack, who was travelling with her young daughter – probably no older than ten – was interviewed for RTE News at the time. She gave this description of him and the lead up to the hijacking.
4 | THE IRISH SCENE
“When we got on the plane we sat in the first row of the smoking and he came on and sat beside us, he looked like a very prosperous well dressed businessman, grey hair, very tanned,” she said. “He sat down and as we started to take off he asked Sinead if she’d ever flown before, and she said yes and I said yes, that we go back and forth quite a lot. He said she’s quite an experienced traveller then! He was very polite to us he took out a brief case and started reading some notes, and when the drinks came he had a brandy and passed us our drinks and then he smoked a cigar, he just sat there. We didn’t suspect anything and as the captain said we were approaching London, he got up, I thought he’d gone to the toilet but he came back and went to the front of the plane.” The crew were able to reason with him that if he wanted to fly the extra 5,000km to reach Tehran they would need to refuel and so they changed course and landed at Le Touquet, Normandy. French authorities were waiting for the plane to arrive.
