- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 February 2000 16.23 GMT
1948 - First hijacking in Asia, when a Cathay Pacific Catalina plane from Macao to Hong Kong was boarded by four Chinese. The pilot and co-pilot were killed and the plane crashed into the sea killing 25 aboard.
1968 - First Arab-Israeli incident and first in a series of political hijackings when three Arabs seized an El-Al Israeli airlines plane in Rome and forced it to fly to Algiers.
1970 - Palestinian guerrillas hijacked three airliners, one TWA, one Swissair and one British Airways, forcing them to land in Jordan where the planes were blown up. All hostages were released in exchange for Palestinan prisoners.
1975 - Out-of-work television engineer Saeed Madjd seized a British Airways jet on a flight from Manchester to London, armed with a toy pistol and an imitation stick of dynamite. The plane landed at Stansted, where Madjd was arrested.
1978 - Two Arab guerrillas seized an airliner at Larnaca, Cyprus. Egyptian commandos flew in uninvited to try to storm the plane during negotiations. Cyprus National Guardsmen resisted and 15 Egyptians died in a 45-minute battle.
1982 - An Air Tanzania Boeing 737 with 99 passengers was hijacked on an internal flight. It ended up at Stansted where passengers were released and the hijackers surrendered. 1985 - The bloodiest hijack in aviation history began when Palestinians seized an Egyptair plane forcing it to Malta. Egyptian commandos stormed the plane and 59 people died.
1986 - At Karachi 22 people died in blaze of gunfire when Pakistani security forces stormed a Pan Am Boeing 747 after four Palestinians held the plane for 16 hours.
1990 - Hijackers seized a Chinese Boeing 737 shortly after it left Xiamen with 104 people on board. The plane crashed as it tried to land in Canton killing 128 people.
1991 - Four Pakistanis seized a Singapore Air A310 Airbus on a 45-minute flight to Singapore to demand the release of the husband of Benazir Bhutto, Asif Ali Zardari. Singaporean commandos shot hijackers dead.
1994 - All 170 passengers and crew on board a hijacked Air France jet survived after French commandos stormed the plane at Marseilles airport, killing the four Islamic terrorists who seized it in Algiers.
1996: An Ethiopian airlines 767 jet plummetted into the Indian Ocean after hijackers stopped the captain from landing at a nearby airport and forced a crash landing. Fifty survived but 125 died.
2000: The hijack of an Indian airlines plane led to criticism for the Indian government who released three Kashmiri militants in exchange for 155 passengers.
