Neerja Bhanot

Neerja Bhanot (7 September 1963 – 5 September 1986) was an Indian flight purser. On 5 September 1986, she saved a large number of passengers onboard Pan Am Flight 73, which had been hijacked by four Palestinian terrorists from the Abu Nidal Organization after it made a stopover at Jinnah International Airport in Pakistan. Around 17 hours into the standoff, after she opened an emergency exit door and began helping passengers escape from the plane, Neerja was shot and killed by the hijackers, two days before her 23rd birthday. Shortly afterwards, Pakistan's Special Service Group stormed the aircraft and captured all of the hijackers. Posthumously, Bhanot became the first female recipient and, until 2003, the youngest recipient of the Ashoka Chakra, the highest peacetime gallantry award of India. She also received the Tamgha-e-Pakistan, the highest civilian award of Pakistan, in addition to several accolades from the United States. Her life and humanitarian actions inspired the 2016 Indian Hindi-language biographical film Neerja, directed by Ram Madhvani and starring actress Sonam Kapoor.