Philippine Airlines Flight 434

Philippine Airlines Flight 434 was the route designator of a flight that flew on a Manila - Cebu - Narita, Japan route.

On December 11, 1994, Flight 434 was enroute from Ninoy Aquino International Airport near Manila, Philippines via Mactan-Cebu International Airport to New Tokyo International Airport in Narita, Japan on December 11, 1994 when a bomb exploded, killing one passenger.

Authorities later discovered that a passenger on the aircraft's preceding flight was Ramzi Yousef, who United States authorities have branded a master Al-Qaida bomber and terrorist. Yousef boarded the flight under an assumed name.

Yousef assembled a bomb in the lavatory and stuck it under Seat 27F on the right-hand side of the fuselage, setting the timer to explode the device four hours later. He and 25 other passengers left the plane at Cebu.

Two hours before e.t.a. at Tokyo, the bomb exploded at 11:43 P.M. while Flight 434 was above Minami Daito Island, which is located 260 miles southwest of Tokyo. The explosion killed 24-year old Haruki Ikegami, a Japanese businessman occupying the seat. He was an industrial sewing machine maker returning from a trip to Cebu. The explosion ripped his body almost in half. The body was then sucked through a hole made in the cockpit.

The Boeing 747-200 made an emergency landing in Naha, Okinawa, one hour after the bomb exploded. None of the aircraft's other 272 passengers or 20 crew members died, although 10 passengers sitting in front of Ikegami were injured.

US prosecutors said the device was a "Mark II" "microbomb". Casio digital watches were used as the timers, cotton wool balls as stabilizers, and an undetectable nitroglycerin liquid inside a contact lens as the explosive. Other ingredients included small amounts of sulfuric acid, nitrobenzene, silver azide, liquid acetone, and nitrate. Two 9-Volt batteries taken from children's toys were used to heat light bulb filaments and detonate the nitroglycerin. The wiring was attached to the arm of the watch using a tiny space under the calculator. The cavity was so small that the watch was worn normally. Yousef smuggled the batteries past airport security in the hollowed out heels of his shoes. He smuggled the nitroglycerin on board using a contact lens solution bottle.

Yousef was testing the bomb for use in the proposed Operation Bojinka terrorist attack. The bomb used on Flight 434 had one-tenth the power of the bombs he planned to use in the first phase of his project which was to bomb 11 aircraft over the Pacific Ocean.

Manila police uncovered his plan on the night of January 5 and the early morning of January 6, 1995, and Yousef was arrested a month later in Pakistan.

Nowadays, the flight no longer originates in Manila, and is strictly a Cebu-Tokyo flight.