CAAC Flight 2505 hijacking

CAAC Flight 2505, or China Northwest Airlines Flight 2505, was a domestic flight of the CAAC Lanzhou Administration (China Northwest Airlines) from Xi'an Xiguan Airport, Shaanxi, to Shanghai Hongqiao Airport. On the morning of 25 July 1982, the flight was operated by an Il-18 numbered B-220; while flying over Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, 5 passengers carrying weapons attempted to hijack the aircraft to Taiwan. The crew and some passengers fought the hijackers and subdued them; 3 passengers and 4 crew members were injured in the struggle. The flight, originally due to arrive in Shanghai at 10:08, finally arrived safely in Shanghai at 12:54 pm that day, with no deaths; the five hijackers were arrested immediately and sentenced to death in August of the same year. This was the first publicly reported hijacking in China.

Course of events

At 8:07 am on 25 July 1982, Flight 2505, operated by the 8th Flying Group of the CAAC Lanzhou Administration (China Northwest Airlines), took off from Xi'an Xiguan Airport carrying 72 passengers, including 19 Americans and 10 Japanese; the crew consisted of 8 people, including captain Yang Jihai (born August 1930, then deputy commander of the 8th Flying Group) and co-pilot Yan Wenhua.

At 9:59 Flight 2505 arrived over Wuxi; as it was preparing to descend, 3 people holding daggers burst into the cockpit and threatened the crew to fly the aircraft to Taiwan, while two other knife-wielding hijackers drove the passengers in the forward cabin into the rear cabin and prohibited anyone from approaching the cockpit. Captain Yang Jihai, taking advantage of the hijackers' inattention, reported the hijacking to the ground, after which the hijacker Sun Yunping smashed the communication equipment. To deceive the hijackers, Yang Jihai pretended to fly the aircraft to Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong, and then, citing a fuel shortage, said he would first fly to Guangzhou Baiyun Airport to refuel, and asked the hijackers to go to the rear cabin to negotiate with the co-pilot; but in fact the aircraft was circling back and forth between Shanghai and Wuxi, and Sun Yunping then stabbed co-pilot Yan Wenhua with a dagger. Yang Jihai flew the aircraft over the urban area of Shanghai and told the hijackers that they had reached Hong Kong; later, over Hongqiao Airport, he pointed to foreign airlines' airliners on the apron and deceived the hijackers into believing they had reached Hong Kong airport.

At around 12:00 the aircraft was still circling, and Yang Jihai continued to insist that the hijackers go to the rear cabin to negotiate; Sun Yunping and the other hijackers had no choice but to agree to the captain sending some crew members to negotiate with them, and by this time the aircraft had very little fuel left. Flight mechanic Liu Zhaoxian and radio operator Miao Xueren, who were sitting at the cockpit door, then went to the middle of the cabin and quietly asked cabin crew leader Xu Kemin to organise the passengers to fight the hijackers. Yu Fukun, an engineer of the Seventh Ministry of Machine Building sitting at the rear cabin door, then directed the passengers in fighting the hijackers together with Liu Zhaoxian and Miao Xueren, and knocked down some of the hijackers with a mop; flight attendants Gai Shenglan and Jia Zhimei and other passengers passed soda bottles, water tank lids and other objects that could be used as weapons to the forward cabin, and some passengers attacked the hijackers directly with umbrellas, belts and the like. During the struggle, Sun Yunping, taking advantage of a moment of inattention, slipped into the aircraft's lavatory, lit a previously placed detonator and set off glycerine explosives, blowing a hole in the fuselage, and then, holding up several more sticks of explosives, headed for the cockpit, but the cabin had been depressurised before the explosion. Yan Wenhua, who had regained consciousness, grabbed Sun Yunping, and navigator Huang Zhenjiang wounded Sun Yunping with the crash axe beside the emergency exit. Yang Jihai shut down one engine 20 kilometres from Hongqiao Airport, and the aircraft finally landed safely at 12:54.