Chilling conversation Lockerbie bombing victim had with her friend before boarding doomed Pan Am flight revealed

Daily Mail​

04-06-2025

A woman has revealed the chilling conversation she had with a friend - before she passed away on the doomed Pan American flight which was blown up in the horrific Lockerbie bombing 37 years ago.
Speaking in a new documentary for the BBC, Alison from Surrey recalled the haunting words she exchanged with co-worker Teresa 'Terri' Saunders, 28, before she got on the plane to New York at Heathrow with her pro-golfer boyfriend William 'Billy' MacAllister, 26.
The couple, both seated next to one another, were on their way to the United States for Christmas.
Thirty eight minutes into the journey on December 21, 1988, an explosion killed everyone on board, as well as 11 residents in the remote Scottish town they were over.
And in the programme which aired last night, Alison said how Terri didn't want to get on the aircraft because she felt sick.
'We had lunch together. We had pizza. We ordered it in and we were sitting at her desk because we didn't have time to go out,' she explained.
'She needed to get away from work early so she could get to Heathrow on time.
'She was full of fluey cold and I can remember her saying "Al, the last thing I feel like is getting on that plane. All I want to do is curl up and go to sleep".'
Billy and Terri were going through the Big Apple as he had some meetings to attend to there - and they were set to go down to Orlando for the holiday afterwards.
Terri was hoping Billy was going to propose, according to her loved ones.
'[Billy] hated flying,' his friend Stewart added. 'He would always pile up on miniatures of Gordon's gin and drink them to calm his nerves because he genuinely hated flying. It's really ironic and horrible that he died the way he died in the circumstances.'
Alison has kept a picture of Terri on her fridge so she can remember her every day.
Recounting the aftermath, she said: 'When I walked into work the next day everyone that I saw was white, shaken, shocked and crying. All I could I see was Terri's desk, everything beautifully, neatly laid out.'
The pair were among 270 who died in the tragedy; and loved ones of six victims have shared the harrowing loss in Lockerbie: Our Story, which is now available on iPlayer.
In another moving account, family members of the late Olive Gordon also reflected on a chat they shared with the 25-year-old hairdresser.
'She was just yapping, you know?' her sister Donna expressed. 'Saying "Ah! I'm going to America tomorrow!"
'I said "I thought you were going to Birmingham?" She said "No, I changed my mind, I'm going to go to New York and I'm going to buy stuff" She loved shopping.'
When she heard news of the bombing, Donna 'felt numb'.
'All I could see was bright lights,' she said. 'I can't even describe it because I just couldn't believe what I was hearing.'
'I have always asked "Why her? Why my sister?",' Olive's brother Colyn also said in the show.
'And it's something that you sort of battle with. And I'm still battling with it a little bit. Well not a little bit, a lot.'
To this day, the family is deeply affected. Olive's niece Tanneisha became emotional as she recounted the effects of the tragedy on her mother as they visited a memorial.
'Whenever I try and plan a holiday away for the whole family, [Donna] is always like "we can't go on the same plane, we fly separately",' she said tearfully.
'And I used to think she was kind of overreacting but like, today I don't think that anymore. I can see why.'
Donna also shared how the family had to go to Lockerbie after the bombing.
'There was a centre somewhere there... and they said "they're starting to put the bodies there".
'And I'm thinking, God, I wonder if she's there.'
'I remember the crater, this huge hole,' Colyn added. 'And these little bits all over the place. It just had this smell. My God, my sister was found somewhere here.
However, despite the devastation, everyone also spoke of their love for the people of Lockerbie - who took care of not only the victims' bodies but went through the painstaking process of cleaning belongings to be returned to families.
'Just thinking about it now makes me emotional because those people, they don't know you, they've never met you - but they way they treated you, it's as if you were family,' Colyn expressed.
'The people of Lockerbie showed how humanity works. How to display compassion. To display love. Just a hand on your shoulder.
I'll never forget them. I remember this giving me hope that there's going to be a better tomorrow.'
The documentary also heard from John, who lost his father Minas Kulukundis, 38, in the tragedy.
His dad's uncle had died and he, along with other relatives, were due to take Concorde to New York for the funeral - and take it back again to be back just in time for Christmas.
But Minas, a shipping broker, was rebooked to take doomed Pan Am 103.
'My father has to be much more than the event that killed him,' John said.
'His memory is almost tainted by the way that he died. It can easily overshadow his memory. The memory of the man and it's the memory of the man that is important, not his death.'
Elsewhere one of the victims - Helga Mosey - had just turned 19 when her life was taken by the bombing. She was on her way to the United States, where she worked as an au pair.
In the documentary, her father Reverend John and Lisa both revealed the heartbreaking moment they realised what had happened to her.
'"What's on the news, on the television, that's nothing to do with us, that's other people". It didn't click,' her dad said.
'But Lisa picked it up straight away. She said "That's Helga's plane". There was a stunned silence and the silence was broken by [her brother] Marcus shouting "No, no, no, no!"'
'Your life is halved when your child is gone,' Lisa added. 'And you have to try and adapt to that.'
The show also heard from Rose - who was the girlfriend of banker Tim Burman, 24.
'At my work, someone had to be there in the office and that was going to be me,' she explained.
'So Tim said "Well, that's not a problem, I'll just come to New York and we'll have Christmas in New York. Man that'll be so exciting".'
'I enjoyed his sense of humour, his style, sense of adventure and his ability to get on with everyone.'
She continued: 'I called Pan Am to find out what the expected arrival time was. Eventually somebody came on the phone and said that there was a problem with the flight and that the flight won't be coming, it won't be landing, that there was an accident.'
The Lockerbie bombing took place on December 21, 1988, when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown out of the sky.
The New York-bound Boeing 747, named Maid of the Seas, was passing five miles above the Scottish town when the explosion tore it apart.
When first reports of a crash came through, many assumed it was a low-flying military training flight which had come to harm.
Flight 103 went down three minutes after 7pm, about half an hour after take-off from Heathrow, as it passed over the town heading out to the west.
The flight was running slightly late and should already have been out over the Atlantic en route to New York.
The cockpit section fell to earth at Tundergarth, about five miles out of town, landing in a field in rolling countryside within yards of a country church and graveyard.
A fuselage section came down on streets in Rosebank, on the northern edge of the town.
Meanwhile, the fuel-laden wing section came down on the Sherwood area on the western edge of Lockerbie, adjoining the A74 road, now a motorway. As it came down it exploded in a fireball made worse by ruptured gas mains.
It was in this area, Sherwood Crescent, where 11 Lockerbie residents were killed. No trace was ever found of some of the victims, who were vaporised in the fireball.
Lockerbie's Town Hall and its ice-rink were pressed into service as temporary mortuaries and within 24 hours of the disaster, a total of 1,000 police had been drafted in, along with 500 military helpers.
In the initial stages, 40 ambulances and 115 personnel attended at Lockerbie. They stood down shortly afterwards due to the minimal number of casualties, with all those involved in the tragedy either dead or having suffered minor injuries.
The bodies and wreckage had come down in two main flight corridors, one of which included the Kielder forest in Northumbria, the most densely-wooded part of the UK.
At the height the plane had been flying, winds were more than 100 knots. Some of the lighter pieces of wreckage were found miles away.
On the night of the crash, police made an immediate policy decision to treat the disaster as a criminal investigation.
Public confirmation of what had been suspected from the outset came on December 28, when investigators announced that traces of high explosive had been found and the plane had been brought down by a bomb.
A later fatal accident inquiry was to determine that the bomb was in a Toshiba radio-cassette player in a Samsonite suitcase which 'probably' joined the flight at Frankfurt in Germany.
Of the 259 passengers and crew - 150 men and 109 women - killed, 188 were Americans and 33 were British. The others came from 19 other countries including France, Germany, India, Sweden, Australia and Japan.
The 11 people who were killed on the ground - four males and seven females - were all British.
Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted in 2001 of the atrocity. He was jailed for 27 years but died of prostate cancer aged 60 in 2012 after being released on compassionate grounds in 2009.
Earlier this year, a review of his conviction was announced. Some suspect he may have been made a scapegoat and that other countries were involved in the terror attack.
Meanwhile, Abu Agila Masud, 72, who is alleged to have helped make the bomb, is to go on trial in the US in May 2025 facing three charges which he denies.