Uli Derickson - James Corley Story

After the hijacking of Flight 847 to Beirut by Shiite terrorists, TWA wanted to recover its 9-million dollar plane from the Beirut airport (which would have cost 18 million to replace) and began working through diplomatic channels to gain return of the jet. Two months after the June 14th hijacking, and after weeks of "sensitive" negotiations between several U.S. and international agencies, the Boeing 727 jet was finally released.

Three times TWA sent crews to retrieve the Boeing 727, and three times the crews were turned back at Cyprus because of intense fighting in the Beirut area.

Finally, TWA was ready to make a fourth attempt and phone calls were made to senior pilots asking for volunteers to fly into Beirut and retrieve the jetliner.

On August 14th, exactly two months after the jet had been hijacked, Jim Corley, a first officer and 22-year veteran with TWA, received a phone call from the airline’s main office in New York asking him if he would be willing to help fly the hijacked Boeing 727 jet out of Beirut rather than fly his scheduled flight to Wichita, Kansas. Corley was, to say the least, surprised by the call.

“Can you guarantee me that there are no bombs on that airplane?” Corley asked the caller. His question was answered with silence.

Corley walked out into the kitchen where his wife, Mary Ann, was cooking breakfast and said, “You’d better brace yourself. Guess where I’m flying to.”

Mary Ann was stunned. Corley had been bidding for the very Athens to Rome route that Captain John Testrake was flying when his plane was hijacked. Now Corley, who had lacked the necessary seniority to win the route, was being asked to fly that very route to retrieve the TWA plane.

“I was just shocked. I was so surprised,” his wife said. “It was strictly a voluntary mission. He could have turned them down, but typical of Jim, he said he’d be glad to. Jim’s never been one to turn down a challenge of any kind,” Mary Ann explained. “He was always volunteering to fly the presidential press planes, but nothing quite like this has ever come along before.”

“They asked if I would do it and I said, ‘OK.’ It was no big deal," Corley said.

Joining Corley on the mission to retrieve the ill-fated jet was Captain Richard Vaux, 51, of Massachusetts, who was a personal friend of Corley's, and a 21-year TWA veteran, and flight engineer Carl Seeland of New Jersey.

Richard Vaux didn't hesitate to accept the mission either saying, "There's a lot of things that come up once in your lifetime and you have to do it. You have to be crazy to be a pilot anyway."

The only instructions Corley received from the main office prior to leaving home was to pack "enough clothes for a week and not to tell anyone outside the family where he was going."

Jim left home the same day he got the call. Mary Ann said that because it all happened so fast, “I really didn’t have that much time to think about it. But after he left home, I thought about nothing else.“

The first leg of the mission included a 12-hour flight to Athens. There they were joined by two mechanics who proceeded to look for places where bombs could be hidden on a 727.

“We didn’t really expect it but it was a possibility,” Corley admitted.

The next leg of the trip took the crew to Larnaca, Cyprus. From Cyprus, the crew, wearing casual pants and sport shirts in an attempt to be inconspicuous, traveled to Beirut on a commercial Middle East Airlines jet. They were recognized, however, because “in Beirut, three Americans really stand out,” Corley laughed.

Passengers sitting in the first-class section with the crew asked the Americans if they were from TWA. Upon hearing that the men were with TWA, the pilot of the Middle East Airlines jet took Captain Vaux into the cockpit just prior to landing in Beirut and showed him the dangerous areas surrounding the airport.

Upon landing at the heavily armed airport, the crew noticed that ships of the Sixth Fleet were patrolling nearby waters.

“We were glad to know there were people out there just in case.” he said.

Captain Vaux told reporters that he and his crew were not greeted warmly. "There were people waving guns in our faces," he said. "When we got to the terminal building , they seemed to come from everywhere, hooting and yelling." Vaux said he was "apprehensive" but not scared during his time in Beirut.

Armed militiamen escorted the crew to a waiting van and then drove them to where the TWA jet had been sitting since the 17-day siege had ended on July 1st.

At least 25 Lebanese soldiers carrying M-16 rifles guarded the plane while the TWA crew inspected it for bombs.

Speaking of the militiamen at the airport, Corley said, “They obviously knew we were coming. I wouldn’t call them menacing at all. They just watched everything we did. Wherever we went there were people following us," he recalled.