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Who Remembers LAA Flight 114?
In the early afternoon of February 21, 1973, Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114, a Boeing 727 with 113 men, women and children aboard, was nearing the end of its regular run from Tripoli, Libya, to Cairo. But it never made it.
As it was preparing to begin its descent to Cairo airport, the unarmed airliner developed compass problems and strayed out of Egyptian-controlled airspace into the skies over the Sinai peninsula, then occupied by Israeli forces. It turned out to be a fatal malfunction.
Within minutes, Israeli Phantom jet fighters had moved into action to intercept the plane. And within minutes after that, one of the fighters had shot it out of the sky. One hundred and six persons, including all but one of the mostly French crew, were killed. The victims were mainly Egyptians and Libyans, and included one American.
In a number of respects, both the attack itself and the reaction of the perpetrators were strikingly similar to the case of Korean Airlines flight 7, shot down recently by Soviet jets after its Boeing 747 had infringed their airspace. Far different, however, was the U.S. response to what happened. President Nixon and the State Department did, of course, deplore the loss of life (even though the U.S. charge in Libya at the time was not permitted to offer condolences in person). But what was missing was any official criticism of what the Israelis had done, not to mention any rhetoric on the scale of what has been said to the Soviets. Nor was the U.S. interested in taking any disciplinary action against Israel. It did not bring the issue to the United Nations. And when the 30-member International Civil Aviation Organization voted on June 5, 1973, to...