What Happened to the Hippy Man?

Hijack Hostage Survivor

By: Mike Thexton

Narrated by: Mike Thexton

Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

On September 5, 1986, a gang of terrorists took over a Pan Am jumbo jet at Karachi Airport, Pakistan. The flight crew escaped, leading to a siege. The leader of the gang shot a passenger and threw his body out to show they meant business. He ordered a flight attendant to collect the passengers' passports. She was sure he would kill an American, so she bravely concealed any American passports with Western names and faces. Frustrated and angry, he picked a British passport, and the flight attendant announced, "Will Michael John Thexton please come to the front of the plane?" A haggard man with straggly hair and a long beard went forward. A three-year old Indian girl asked her parents, "What happened to the hippy man?"

Mike Thexton was held at the front of the plane for 12 hours, waiting to be shot. When the ground power unit failed and the plane became dark, the terrorists put him back with the others, before opening fire indiscriminately. At least 20 people died and over a hundred were injured, but Mike escaped by jumping off the wing of the plane and running away, sure that he would wake up and find himself still kneeling by the front door.

This book tells the story of Mike's journey to Pakistan to say goodbye to his brother, who died in the Karakoram mountains in 1983, his extraordinary bad and good luck on flight PA073, the heroism of the flight attendants, and the long aftermath of one of the bloodiest terrrorist atrocities of the 1980s. After the leader of the gang was sentenced to 160 years in an American jail in 2004, Mike wrote a print book to tell the story up to that point. Since then the story has been retold in two documentaries—on Discovery and Sky—and in the Indian thriller Neerja. Mike's part in the Sky documentary has finally given him the answer to a question that has puzzled him for 35 years: "Why didn't they shoot me?" The audiobook has been updated to complete the story, which comes full circle back to Mike's brother.

©2006 Lanista Partners Ltd (P)2023 Lanista Partners Ltd