With Captain Testrake being held at gunpoint, the airplane was diverted from its original destination of Rome, in airspace over Greece, to the Middle East and made its first stop, for several hours, at the Beirut International Airport in Lebanon, where 19 passengers were allowed to leave in exchange for fuel.

When Beirut ATC tried to talk to the hijackers, Testrake interrupted, "He has pulled a hand-grenade pin and he is ready to blow up the aircraft if he has to.

"[10] At the time, Lebanon was in the midst of the Lebanese Civil War, and Beirut was divided into sectors controlled by different Shia Amal militia and Hezbollah.

That afternoon, the aircraft continued on across the Mediterranean Sea to Algiers, where 20 passengers were released during a five-hour stop before heading back to Beirut that night.

[11] Nearly a dozen heavily armed men joined the hijackers before the airplane returned to Algiers the next day, 15 June,[1] where an additional 65 passengers and all five female cabin crew members were released.

The other 39 remained captive until June 30 when they were collected in a local schoolyard after an intervention by U.S. President Ronald Reagan along with Lebanese officials.

The hostages then boarded a U.S. Air Force C-141B Starlifter cargo plane and flew to Rhein-Main AB, Hesse, West Germany, where they were met by U.S. Vice President George H. W. Bush, debriefed, given medical examinations, then flown to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland and welcomed home by the president.

[2] A famous image of this hijacking was a photograph showing a gun being held near Captain Testrake, sticking out of the cockpit window, while he and the other pilots were being interviewed by ABC News reporter Charles Glass.

Notably, she interrupted an attempt to end the hijacking in Algiers when airport officials refused to refuel the plane without payment by offering her own Shell Oil credit card, which was used to charge about $5,500 for 22,700 L (6,000 gal) of jet fuel, for which she was reimbursed.

[15] On October 10, 2001, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, three of the alleged hijackers, Imad Mughniyeh, Ali Atwa, and Hassan Izz-Al-Din, having been indicted earlier in United States district courts for the 1985 skyjacking of the American airliner, were among the original 22 fugitives announced by President George W. Bush to be placed on the newly formed FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list.

Mohammed Ali Hammadi was arrested in 1987 in Frankfurt, West Germany, while attempting to smuggle liquid explosives, two years after the TWA Flight 847 attack.

In addition to the West German charge of illegal importation of explosives, he was tried and convicted of Stethem's 1985 murder and was sentenced to life in prison.

[22] On February 14, 2006 the United States formally asked the Lebanese government to extradite Mohammed Ali Hammadi for Stethem's murder.

[24] Several news outlets reported the announcement by Hezbollah of the death of Imad Mughniyeh in a car bomb explosion in Syria on February 13, 2008.