Video: 'Swissair-Flug 330 - neues Licht auf den Absturz von 1970: Kulturplatz'

(Saturday, February 21, 1970, approximately 1:33 p.m. Central European Time) — All 47 people aboard Swissair Flight 330 were killed today when the Convair 990 jet was damaged in mid-flight by a bomb put on the plane and detonated by the Palestinian terror group PFLP-GC.

The flight departed Zurich at 1:14 p.m., bound for Tel Aviv and, seven minutes later, the bomb’s barometric pressure mechanism triggered the explosion in the cargo hold when the Convair reached an altitude 4,300 meters (14,100 ft).

The pilot, Karl Berlinger, turned the plane back toward Zurich upon detecting the loss in cabin pressure, and the crew realized there was fire at 1:26 p.m. before smoke filled the cabin.

By 1:33 p.m., the plane was so full of smoke that the crew couldn’t see the instruments and Berlinger radioed his last message to the tower (in English)— “We are crashing. Goodbye everybody.”

The jet crashed in the Unterwald forest, at Würenlingen, went into a dive, and impacted at a speed of 770 kilometers per hour (480 mph), obliterating the plane and everyone and everything on board.