| Summary/Abstract |
International terrorism has a history of targeting airliners and airports. The deadliest-ever single act of terror against civil aviation was the 1985 bombing by Sikh terrorists of Air India flight 182 from Toronto over the Irish coast, with a loss of 329 passengers and 22 crew members. Since the 1990s, civil aviation has emerged as a principal target for various militant Islamist groups. Certain foreign governments, among them the Islamic Republic of Iran, are known to deploy client terrorist groups, like Hizbullah, for terrorist operations against countries toward which they are hostile. State-sponsored terrorism was responsible for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, with the loss of 259 lives, for which a Libyan intelligence officer was subsequently convicted but subsequently released before completing his jail term.
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