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Michael Thexton

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.

Mar 3, 2026

20:02
Was there any remnants from that moving forward? You know, was there any issues that you dealt with? Oh, absolutely.
20:09
I probably thought about it every day for two years.
20:13
Wow.
20:14
That it would...
20:16
Not...
20:17
I wouldn't be sort of in fear and trembling.
20:19
I mean, except occasionally if a sort of loud noise went off, it would just always be running through my mind.
25:11
And of course, Michael was also there.
30:28
In that moment, were you thinking about your parents and your family and, you know, here's another son now going to be lost?
30:35
Yes, I mean, I don't think I would say it was guilt in that moment.
30:39
I just felt terribly sad for them.
30:44
I knew how awful it would be.
30:46
You know, I knew how awful it had been when Peter died.
30:50
And I felt...
30:52
Just sadness.
33:54
And while this was all going on, up the aisle walks one of the hijackers.
10:57
However, of course, what he could never know was just how quickly this disruption would become very much his problem.
11:09
But so there were people sort of standing by the plate glass windows looking out for the plane.
11:14
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.
11:23
And it parked itself a little distance away.
11:26
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.
11:42
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.
12:02
And at the bottom of the staircase, there's people in uniform.
15:06
Michael, almost transfixed by what was going on, was frozen, staring at what was unfolding in front of him.
23:25
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.
23:49
And so they had an expedition in his memory which went to Kenya, and they climbed Mount Kenya.
23:55
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.
24:06
Pete will be turning in his grave.
24:09
But these guys were perhaps not quite as competent climbers as Pete had been.
24:14
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.
24:27
And we're going to, you know, this is the area where Pete died.
26:08
What was the emotions for that? Was it excitement? Did you have any nerves about

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