Turkish Airlines Flight 487
Boeing 737 · Hijacking
From Adana Şakirpaşa Airport (ADA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- Event fatalities
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- 39
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
Boeing 737
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 737
- Category
- Airplane · from aircraft type
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- TC-JDF
- Operator
- Turkish Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- 1
- Route
- From Adana Şakirpaşa Airport (ADA)To not recorded
Approximate · Estimated position: Esenboğa International Airport, the airport the Wikipedia article names as the site. Where on or near it is not known.
From the Wikipedia article
On 29 October 1998, the 75th anniversary of the Turkish Republic, a man armed with a handgun and a grenade hijacked a Boeing 737-400 on Turkish Airlines Flight 487, which was scheduled to fly from Adana to Ankara-Esenboğa. The hijacker stated that he was protesting against the Turkish government's "dirty war" against ethnic Kurds in Turkey. The pilot read out a statement from the hijacker, who demanded to be taken to Lausanne in Switzerland, because it was there that the modern Turkish state had been created in a treaty signed 75 years earlier. The hijacker, however, agreed to the pilot's request to land in Sofia to refuel. Instead, however, the pilot landed in Ankara at around 21:00, without the hijacker's knowledge. After 7 hours of unsuccessful negotiations, the aircraft was stormed by special forces through one of the rear doors at around 04:00 and the hijacker was shot dead in the cockpit. There were no other fatalities or injuries. It is not known whether the hijacker acted alone or on behalf of the PKK.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the German Wikipedia article “Turkish-Airlines-Flug 487” (revision 258172832, retrieved 2026-09-19) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out; the translation may contain errors, and long articles were cut to their first 700 words. Read the article
Sources
German Wikipedia article: Turkish-Airlines-Flug 487
- Article
- Turkish-Airlines-Flug 487
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 258172832 · 2025-07-21 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q106658072
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
Where each value comes from
- Record
- de Wikipedia article "Turkish-Airlines-Flug 487" (page 11761010, revision 258172832), translated into English with AI assistance
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from Wikidata (P17)
- Map position
- airport the Wikipedia infobox site links (Wikidata code, OurAirports)
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- flight number in the article title
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities
- Ground fatalities
- not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia article lead
Source notes (1)
- Wikipedia · Facts from the German Wikipedia article's infobox, translated into English with AI assistance, not checked against an investigation report. Independent review pending.