Arrival in Africa

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LV Brussels @ 10:55 am (Brussels Airlines)

AR Entebbe @ 8:55 pm



All international flights to Uganda arrive at the Entebbe Airport, located outside of Kampala, the capital. The airport played a role in a very publicized hijacking that took place in the late 1970s. A flight from Israel to Paris was hijacked and diverted to Entebbe, where the hijackers were warmly welcomed by Idi Amin, the infamous Ugandan dictator. The Israeli military conducted a successful hostage-rescue mission in the middle of the night about one week later to rescue all passengers. (The original terminal is no longer in operation.) As a kid, I learned of the hijacking not from the nightly news, but from two really bad made-for-tv movies at that time. The first one starred Charles Bronson, where he single-handedly saved the day. The other version had an all-star cast, which included Elizabeth Taylor, Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, among many others. Both movies were filled with bad dialogue, worse acting, and likely available on YouTube for your enjoyment.

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