Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 is hijacked, then crashes into the Indian Ocean off the coast of Comoros after running out of fuel, killing 125.
Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 was a scheduled flight serving the route Addis Ababa–Nairobi–Brazzaville–Lagos–Abidjan. On 23 November 1996, the aircraft serving the flight, a Boeing 767-200ER, was hijacked en route from Addis Ababa to Nairobi by three Ethiopians seeking asylum in Australia. The plane crash-landed in the Indian Ocean near Grande Comore, Comoros Islands due to fuel exhaustion; 125 of the 175 passengers and crew on board, including the three hijackers, died. This is the first recorded instance of a partially successful water landing utilizing a wide-body aircraft, the first successful landing being Pan Am Flight 6 in 1956, in which all passengers on board survived, although the plane used was a Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, which is not a wide-body aircraft.