[1][2] The incident led to Air France halting their flights to Algeria until 2004, two years after the end of the Algerian Civil War.

The Algerian military felt suspicious on noticing that the Air France flight appeared to have an unauthorised delay, so they began surrounding the aircraft.

[4] The hijackers had Kalashnikov automatic rifles, Uzi submachine guns, pistols, homemade hand grenades and two 10-stick dynamite packs.

We are here to wage war in his name.Abderrahmane Meziane Chérif, the Minister of the Interior of Algeria, came to the airport control tower to begin negotiating with the hijackers, who were using the captain to speak for them.

French Prime Minister Édouard Balladur was recalled from his Christmas holiday in Chamonix, France, and other government officials were also summoned from their vacations.

The captain could not take off because the aircraft boarding stairs were still attached to the plane and the Algerian authorities were blocking the runway with parked vehicles.

In order to force the Algerian government to comply with their demands, the hijackers approached the police officer and told him to follow them.

Captain Delhemme recalled that his first contact with the passenger cabin during the hijacking was when a flight attendant, allowed into the cockpit, asked the pilots if they needed anything.

Prime Minister Balladur said that he asked the Algerian government "extremely forcefully and urgently" to give permission for the aircraft to take off.

[4] During the night, Spanish authorities allowed the French military to send its forces to Majorca, Spain, which was as close to Algeria as was possible without being accused of interfering in the situation.

[4] At 8:00 p.m., Groupe d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale (GIGN) operatives boarded an Airbus A300 aircraft similar to F-GBEC, the hijacked plane, at a military base in France.

[4] After the GIGN's plane arrived at Palma de Mallorca Airport, the Algerian government made it clear that French forces were not welcome in Algeria.

Philippe Legorjus, a former Air France security adviser, said in an interview that the airline employees "lived through [the event] with great emotion."

[1] Favier explained in an interview that the enemy was arriving in friendly territory, and the power difference would be a key element in the struggle.

The negotiators delayed the ultimatum by giving the aircraft additional food and water, emptying the toilet tanks, and providing vacuum cleaners.

[4] Twelve hours after the A300 arrived at Marseille, the GIGN knew how many hijackers were on board and their location on the aircraft with the help of eavesdropping devices, infrared vision equipment, and "cannon" microphones.

Zahida Kakachi, a passenger, recalled that the hijackers began reciting verses from the Quran on the public address system.

The GIGN had trained on an empty aircraft, in which the suspension system of the plane was not as compressed, leading to an overestimation of the necessary height of the boarding stairs.

Christophe Morin, a flight attendant, recalled that the GIGN ordered passengers and crew to get down as low as possible with their hands over their heads, hide, and then to not move.

[4] GIGN commando Philippe Bardelli was leading a column up the front right stairs, as that team was tasked with throwing stun grenades in the cockpit, when a 7.62 × 39 mm bullet from an AK-47 hit his drawn pistol and detonated the cartridges; Bardelli later remarked that his pistol thereby saved his life, since such AK-47 rounds were able to penetrate the GIGN's helmet visors.

[7] Several hours after the incident ended, the Armed Islamic Group, which had claimed responsibility for the event, killed four Roman Catholic priests in retaliation in Tizi-Ouzou, Algeria.

Flight attendant Claude Burgniard said that she "kept seeing the faces" of the three passengers who had been executed; when she received her medal she realised that she had helped save 173 people; this allowed her to mourn and get over the incident.

Pasqua said that if the militants crashed an aircraft on the Eiffel Tower or the Élysée Palace, they would have committed what they would believe to be "an extraordinary feat.

[1] 25-year-old Abdul Abdullah Yahia, also known as "The Emir", was a petty thief and greengrocer from the Bab El Oued neighbourhood of Algiers.

Another passenger said the hijackers "seemed excited, very euphoric" and that they told the occupants that they would teach the French and the world a lesson and show what they were capable of doing.

Claude Burgniard, a flight attendant, recalled that the crew and passengers gave nicknames to the hijackers "to make things simpler".

Flight 8969 captain Bernard Delhemme and Colonel Denis Favier, then a major who was head of the GIGN counter-terrorist unit assigned to the flight, gave their first television interviews for Mayday, appearing in silhouette, as both felt under threat after the events and that members of the public believed that the militants were offering a reward for Favier's assassination.

[10] Flight attendant Christophe Morin and passenger Zahida Kakachi co-authored the book Le vol Alger-Marseille: Journal d'otages, recalling the events of the attack and how it had affected their lives.

[2] It was stated explicitly that a mole within the GIA terrorists informed the French authorities that the intention was to use the aircraft as a missile to attack Paris.

[12] The 2011 French film The Assault, directed by Julien Leclercq, based on the book L'Assaut: GIGN, Marignane, 26 décembre 1994, 17 h 12 by Roland Môntins, depicts the events of Flight 8969.