Frequently Asked Questions

What was Pan Am 103?

Pan Am 103 was a regularly scheduled, transatlantic, passenger airline flight. On the evening of 21 December 1988, the winter solstice, the Boeing 747 was flying from London to New York City. At 7:03 p.m., the flight had just entered Scottish airspace and was cruising at an altitude of 31,000 feet/9,500 meters, when a terrorist bomb hidden in an unaccompanied suitcase detonated in one of the aircraft’s cargo holds.

 

Where did the plane crash?

The explosion destroyed the aircraft and scattered wreckage across an area of 845 square miles in southern Scotland and northern England, creating the largest crime scene in history. Sections of the plane’s fuselage crashed in the town of Lockerbie while the nose cone, containing the cockpit and first-class seating, crashed in a field across the road from Tundergarth Church and this Remembrance Room, about three miles east of Lockerbie. First responders rushed to the crash sites, searched for survivors, and extinguished fires. For months, police officers, soldiers, and others combed the region for bodies, plane fragments, and evidence. 

 

Who were the attack’s victims? 

The bombing of Pan Am 103 is the deadliest terrorist attack in U.K. history. It killed 270 people, including all 259 aboard the flight. Eleven Lockerbie residents also died when plane wreckage crashed and set their homes ablaze. The victims represented 21 nations—190 were U.S. citizens, and 43 were U.K. citizens—and a variety of ethnicities, economic classes, and faith traditions. They ranged in age from 2 months to 82 years, with more than half under 30 years old. More than a quarter were students.

 

Who bombed Pan Am 103?

More than 35 years later, the bombing investigation continues. Investigators have pursued leads in dozens of countries, and evidence has implicated a terrorist group and two state sponsors of terrorism, Libya and Iran. There has been only one conviction. In 2001, a Scottish Court found a Libyan official named Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi guilty of mass murder and acquitted another Libyan, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah. Megrahi served 8 1⁄2 years in prison—11 1⁄2 days for each of the attack’s victims—before he was diagnosed with cancer and released on compassionate grounds. A third Libyan suspect, alleged bombmaker Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, is scheduled to go on trial in Washington, D.C., in May 2025.

 

Why did terrorists bomb the flight?

Pan American World Airways was a U.S. commercial airline, and the bombing of flight 103 is considered an attack against the United States—one event in the U.S.’s escalating tensions with terrorist groups and oil-producing nations in the 1980s. In July 1988, the naval cruiser USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air flight 655 in Iranian airspace, killing all 290 people on board. Investigators have also argued that the bombing was retaliation for U.S. airstrikes in Libya in 1986.

 

Why is this incident important?

The Pan Am 103 terrorist attack has never occupied its proper place in history. Most people today have little or no awareness of the event, even though it ushered in the modern age of global terrorism. The U.S. government, preferring business as usual, has shown limited interest in directing adequate resources toward the investigation and prosecution. The bombing remains the oldest cold case of mass murder in the U.K. and U.S. 

By uncovering and learning the lessons of Pan Am 103, we can advocate for better protections for the flying public. We can demand changes in our government’s aggressive commercial policies, which incite political violence and retaliation from oil-producing countries. By implementing the necessary changes and preserving the history of what happened in Lockerbie on and after 21 December 1988, we can reduce the threat of this history repeating itself.