I was a hostage on Pan Am Flight 73 – I never knew why terrorist saved me until he revealed reason on phone from prison

KNEELING at the front of a hijacked jumbo jet with an assault rifle pointing to his head, Mike Thexton prepared for the end of his life.

Zaid Hassan Abd Latif Safarini, of the feared Abu Nidal terror group, had already killed one passenger as Pan Am Flight 73 sat at Karachi airport, Pakistan, in September 1986.

Brit Mike, then 27 and an accountant, was supposed to be next if the authorities did not meet the demands of the Palestinian hijackers.

He calmed himself by deciding to go like a “true English gentleman”.

The Londoner, now 63, tells The Sun of the terrorist: “I thought, ‘I am not going to hate him, he’s going to do what he’s going to do, but I am going to shake him by the hand’. That just seemed to settle it. I wasn’t frightened of him any more.”

As negotiators attempted to bring the 15-hour siege to an end, Mike was made to kneel by the door, expecting his life to end with a shot from the AK-47.

But the bullet never came.

It was only while making new Sky documentary, Hijacked: Flight 73, that Mike discovered the reason Safarini spared him.

The film shows Mike talking on the phone to the terrorist, who is serving 160 years in a high-security prison in the US for his part in the hijacking which saw 21 people killed and hundreds injured.

‘Unbearably awful’

Safarini reveals for the first time that he had been touched by a plea Mike had made.

Mike’s older brother Peter had died three years earlier from altitude sickness while climbing the K2 mountain in Pakistan.

Mike, who was returning from a trip to retrace his brother’s steps, told the hijacker that his brother had died in the mountains and his parents would have no one else.

He tells The Sun: “In all the years, I had thought of various reasons why he didn’t shoot me, but that hadn’t occurred to me.

“I thought he wasn’t really listening to me, and the idea that the death of my brother would stick with him for 12 hours astounded me.”

Very little of the hijacking turned out the way anyone expected.

The four terrorists planned to force the pilot to fly the Boeing 747, packed with 360 passengers, into buildings in Israel.

But that plot was quickly foiled by the quick-thinking Indian flight attendants.

Air hostess Sherene Pavan sent a hijacking code to the pilots, who opened a hatch at the top of the plane and used a winch to descend to the ground.

As they were making their escape, Safarini demanded that 22-year-old flight attendant Sunshine Vesuwala let him into the cabin.

But she recalls: “I told them I wasn’t senior enough to have the key, even though I did have it.”

By the time Safarini had kicked in the flimsy door the pilots were gone.

Plan B was to demand a new team of pilots be provided.

In order to show the authorities he meant business, Safarini shot US citizen Rajesh Kumar.

And he told the negotiators that a passenger would be killed every 20 minutes until the pilots arrived.

Sunshine was asked to collect all the passengers’ passports and hand him the ones belonging to either Israeli or white US citizens.

But Sunshine hid all the Americans’ passports. That led to Mike being picked out.

Sunshine, who Mike praises for her bravery and quick-thinking, says: “My plan did not work out well for Mike. I felt guilty about that for years.”

The negotiators promised to send a volunteer crew from Germany, but said it would take time.

The terrorists paused the executions while they waited.

Gradually, their guards dropped, with Safarini ordering the hostesses to drink champagne with him.

Mike says: “Safarini was sitting in one of the seats with four flight attendants around him, chatting them up.”

Sunshine adds: “Safarini was very handsy . . . just for that I wanted to shoot him.”

When the other terrorists went to have a smoke in the toilet Safarini freaked out as the alarm went off.

Mike remembers: “The hostess Sherene incredibly calmly told him it was just the toilet smoke alarm going off and went in and switched it off, averting her eyes.

“If Safarini had fired his gun his mates would have fired theirs.”

It was the hijackers’ blind panic that brought a bloody end to the ordeal.

Mike had been told to join the rest of the passengers, who had been herded into the middle of the plane.

The lights were already dim due to a shortage of power — then they suddenly cut out.

Immediately the terrorists threw their hand grenades at the passengers and started firing automatic weapons indiscriminately in the dark.

Mike says: “It was unbearably loud, unbearably awful. I just kept my head down as low as possible.”

A pregnant woman, a young boy and one of Sunshine’s friends were among those massacred.

“The person in front of me got shot in the head,”

Sunshine says. “She fell back on to me. There were brains and blood all over me.”

The killing only stopped because the terrorists ran out of bullets — and did not have the nerve to set off their suicide belts.

Mike jumped 20ft from the wing to escape.

Safarini was initially given a death sentence but it was reduced to 12 years in prison.

After he was released from jail in Pakistan he was extradited to the US.

The other three hijackers and a co-conspirator were extradited to Palestine.

Mike says: “I still check where the emergency exits are when I get on a plane.”

But he concludes: “The main effect was to think how lucky I am.”

• Hijacked: Flight 73 will be on Sky Documentaries and streaming service Now from Saturday.