Trans World Airlines in the context of "John F. Kennedy International Airport"

TWA Flight 847 was a regularly scheduled Trans World Airlines flight from Cairo to San Diego with en route stops in Athens, Rome, Boston, and Los Angeles. On the morning of June 14, 1985, Flight 847 was hijacked soon after take off from Athens. The hijackers demanded the release of a total of 784 Shia Muslims from Israeli custody and took the plane repeatedly to Beirut and Algiers. After the incident, Western analysts asserted that hijackers had been members of Hezbollah, however, Hezbollah refutes that claim to this day.

The hijacking and subsequent hostage situation played out over the course of 17 days, during which the aircraft crisscrossed the Mediterranean. Many passengers were tied up and beaten, and those with Jewish-sounding names were separated from the others. United States Navy diver Robert Stethem was murdered, and his body was thrown onto the Beirut airport apron. The ordeal finally ended after some of the hijackers' demands had been met and they agreed to release all remaining hostages. Many believed that due to the lawless nature of Lebanon at the time the captors would go unpunished.

National Airlines was a trunk carrier, a scheduled airline in the United States that operated from 1934 until it merged with Pan Am in 1980. For most of its existence the company was headquartered at Miami International Airport, Florida. At its height, National Airlines had a network of "Coast-to-Coast-to-Coast" flights, linking Florida and Gulf Coast destinations such as New Orleans and Houston with cities along the East Coast as far north as Boston as well as with large cities on the West Coast including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. From 1970 to 1978, National, Braniff International Airways, Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) and Trans World Airlines (TWA) were the only U.S. airlines permitted to operate scheduled passenger flights to Europe.

St. Louis Lambert International Airport (IATA: STL, ICAO: KSTL, FAA LID: STL), commonly referred to as Lambert Field or simply Lambert, is the primary international airport serving St. Louis, Missouri and its metropolitan area. Covering 3,793 acres (1,535 ha) of land, it is the largest and busiest airport in the U.S. state of Missouri, being located 14 miles (23 km) northwest of downtown St. Louis in unincorporated St. Louis County between Berkeley and Bridgeton. The airport provides nonstop service to over 80 destinations within the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Europe, having served nearly 16 million passengers in 2024.

Named for Olympic medalist and prominent St. Louis aviator Albert Bond Lambert, the airport rose to international prominence in the 20th century thanks to its association with Charles Lindbergh, its groundbreaking air traffic control (ATC), its status as the primary hub of Trans World Airlines (TWA), and its iconic terminal.