Incident Overview

Description
Philippine Air Lines flight PR434 departed Manila, Philippines on a service to Tokyo, Japan with an en route stop at Cebu, Philippines. One of the passengers on the first leg was Ramzi Yousef, who was using a fake name. After the plane was airborne, he went into the lavatory with his dopp kit and took off his shoes to get out batteries, wiring, and spark source hidden in the heel. He removed an altered Casio digital watch from his wrist to be used as a timer, unpacked the remaining materials from his dopp kit, and assembled a bomb. He set the timer for four hours later, which was approximately the time at which the plane would be far out over the ocean en route to Tokyo, put the entire bomb back into his dopp kit, and returned to his current seat. He managed to hide the bomb in the life vest pocket under seat 26K, a window seat on the right hand side of the plane. He deplaned after landing at Cebu and seat 26K was occupied by a Japanese passenger. The flight departed Cebu with a 38-minute delay. While en route the bomb exploded, killing the passenger seated there and injuring some ten other passengers nearby. The blast blew a hole in the floor, severing several control cables in the ceiling. A successful emergency landing at Okinawa was made at 12:45. Ramzi Yousef was arrested in January 1995. It is alleged that he placed the device as a test for other planned airplane bombings.
Primary Cause
False identity and concealment of a bomb.False identity and concealment of a bomb.Share on: