The How, Why and Who of Pan Am Flight 103

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Nicola Jane Hall, aged 23 years, of Sandton, South Africa, was one of the 259 people killed on board when Pan Am Flight 103 was sabotaged over Lockerbie, Scotland, on 21 December 1988. Eleven more were killed in the town of Lockerbie, bringing the total number of fatalities to 270.

Nicola Hall had travelled overnight from Johannesburg on South African Airways (SAA) Flight 234 with a high-powered apartheid delegation which included foreign minister Pik Botha, defence minister Magnus Malan and military intelligence chief General C J Van Tonder. Because SAA had been banned from landing in the United States, on account of the 1986 Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, the South African party were all booked for onward travel by the US carrier Pan Am from London, Heathrow to JFK, New York.

After an eleven-hour flight, SA234 arrived at Heathrow at 07:20am. Pik Botha and his party were booked for onward travel on Pan Am Flight 101 at 11:00am to New York for the signing ceremony of the Namibia independence agreement at UN headquarters on Thursday, 22 December 1988. Since Nicola Hall was not in Pik Botha's official party, she was booked on the evening flight Pan Am 103 at 18:00pm.

That South African Airways were involved in unlawfully switching baggage that day was confirmed by a Pan Am security officer, Michael Jones, at the Lockerbie fatal accident inquiry (FAI) in October 1990. Jones told the FAI a breach of aviation rules had been committed because the suitcase of South African passenger, Miss Nicola Hall, had been put on the earlier Pan Am 101 flight (with Pik Botha's delegation) whereas Miss Hall was booked – and died – on PA 103.[1]

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