
Michael Thexton
British Pan Am Flight 73 hijacking survivor, author of "What Happened to the Hippy Man?", and director of Thexton Training Ltd, a London-based tax training firm.
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Mar 3, 2026
Pan Am Flight 73: The 1986 Karachi Hijacking P4
20:19
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20:02Jack LaurenceHOST
Was there any remnants from that moving forward? You know, was there any issues that you dealt with? Oh, absolutely.

Michael ThextonGUEST
I mean, except occasionally if a sort of loud noise went off, it would just always be running through my mind.
Pan Am Flight 73: The 1986 Karachi Hijacking P3
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30:28Jack LaurenceHOST
In that moment, were you thinking about your parents and your family and, you know, here's another son now going to be lost?
Pan Am Flight 73: The 1986 Karachi Hijacking P2
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10:57Jack LaurenceHOST
However, of course, what he could never know was just how quickly this disruption would become very much his problem.

Michael ThextonGUEST
But so there were people sort of standing by the plate glass windows looking out for the plane.

Michael ThextonGUEST
It was a little bit late, but it came in a beautiful cloudless day, not hot because it was, you know, still only about 20 to six in the morning.

Michael ThextonGUEST
And then buses came and took away a few people who who had flown from Mumbai to Karachi and had no idea how lucky they were that they were getting off this plane in Karachi and then took economy class passengers out to the plane.

Michael ThextonGUEST
And then a couple of little buses drove us out and at the front of the plane, two mobile staircases going up to the front, two doors, first and business going up the front staircase, economy going up the second staircase.
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15:06Jack LaurenceHOST
Michael, almost transfixed by what was going on, was frozen, staring at what was unfolding in front of him.
Pan Am Flight 73: The 1986 Karachi Hijacking P1
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23:25Jack LaurenceHOST
That summer, some of the students from the medical school where Pete had trained as a doctor as well as where he'd been a leading light of the mountaineering climbing club that was also run from St Mary's Hospital got in touch with the family to ask if they would be happy for them to hold what they were calling the Thexton Memorial Expedition.

Michael ThextonGUEST
And so they had an expedition in his memory which went to Kenya, and they climbed Mount Kenya.

Michael ThextonGUEST
My friends who I'd gone climbing with, with Pete, they happened to be also in Kenya that summer, and I got a postcard from them saying, have met the Pete Thexton Memorial Expedition.

Michael ThextonGUEST
But these guys were perhaps not quite as competent climbers as Pete had been.

Michael ThextonGUEST
But at the beginning of 1986, they said, we had a really good trip to Kenya, and we are going to go to Lobsang Spire, this last mountain that Pete climbed.
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26:08Jack LaurenceHOST
What was the emotions for that? Was it excitement? Did you have any nerves about