← What I survived
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- [00:00]
Podcast Sponsor/Advertiser
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- [00:40]
Redfin Advertiser
Support is available 24.
- [00:42]
Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
7 with VRBoCare.
- [00:43]
Michael Thexton
We're here day or night, ready whenever you need help.
- [00:48]
Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
Because a great trip starts with the right support.
- [00:56]
News Reporter
Pakistani commandos stormed a hijacked Pan Am jumbo jet this afternoon. It was the jet carrying about 400 people. The latest report is that at least dozens of people were left wounded and about 15 persons dead in a withering hail of automatic weapons fired.
- [01:21]
Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
Flying is something most of us will do several times in our lives. Sometimes it's a short domestic hop, other times a long haul journey across the world. On any given day, roughly 100,000 commercial flights will take off and land globally. And yet, for many people, stepping onto an aircraft is still an anxious experience. There's the fear of flying itself, being sealed inside a metal tube, traveling at hundreds of kilometres an hour, 35,000ft above the ground. The knowledge that if something were to go wrong up there, you're completely reliant on the people in the cockpit.
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Michael Thexton
Hello, Jack.
- [02:00]
Interviewer
Mr. Thexton. How are you, sir?
- [02:03]
Michael Thexton
I'm very well, thank you very much.
- [02:05]
Interviewer
I very much appreciate your time, sir. Thank you very much indeed.
- [02:08]
Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
Before every flight, we carefully walk through the safety procedures. Seat belts, oxygen masks, emergency exits. What to do if the cabin fills with smoke, what to do if there's a water landing. But there's one scenario that's never discussed. No safety card explains what to do if someone were to take control of the plane.
- [02:31]
Michael Thexton
So she went upstairs. By the time she got the top of the stairs in front of the hijacker, she realized that she needed to give the pilot time to escape.
- [02:40]
Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
For most of us, hijackings feel like something from another era. Something associated with the headlines of the 1970s, or something that only truly entered public consciousness after September 11, 2001. It's not something passengers actively prepare for, and it's certainly not something anyone expects to experience firsthand.
- [03:02]
Michael Thexton
I was telling myself, stay calm, make yourself inconspicuous.
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Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
In 1986, even less so. Air travel was different Then security was looser. Doors to the cockpit weren't reinforced. The idea that an ordinary commercial flight could suddenly turn into a hostage situation wasn't part of the average passenger's mental checklist. And yet, for Michael Thexton and the rest of the passengers and crew aboard Lufthansa Flight 73, that unimaginable scenario became a reality. Before the plane's wheels had even left
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News Reporter
the Runway, Pakistani commandos stormed a hijacked Pan Am jumbo jet. This afternoon, it was the jet carrying about 400. When we say this afternoon, we mean this afternoon, New York time it was.
- [03:50]
Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
Pan Am Flight 73 was a Pan American World Airlines flight from Bombay, India, to New York City, with scheduled stops in Karachi, Pakistan and Frankfurt, West Germany. On September 5, 1986, the Boeing 747 was hijacked while on the ground at Karachi by four armed Palestinian militants of the Abu Nidal organization. And they wanted one thing, for that flight to take off, taking them to Cyprus and then on to Israel to pick up Palestinian prisoners. But luckily for Michael and the rest of the 359passengers, the plane would never make it off that tarmac. However, by the time the ordeal was over, sadly, more than 20 passengers would be killed. And Michael Thexton was very close to being the 21st.
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Michael Thexton
And I burst out laughing. I mean, I was probably close to fairly uncontrollable hysterics. I said, I haven't got a gun. You've got all the guns around here. And he said, neil here.
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Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
So how does an accountant from South West London end up in Pakistan on a plane with a gun to his head? Well, to understand that, we first must start at the very beginning and the extraordinary story of Michael's brother. My name's Jack Lawrence. Welcome to what I survived.
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Musician/Singer
Moon in the sky I'm looking at the moon in the sky this shouldn't come as a surprise, but I can't
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Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
sleep
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Musician/Singer
War in my mind I'm trying to fight a war in my mind I don't know who's the winner tonight but it ain't.
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Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
Chapter One. People want to be what their heroes are.
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Michael Thexton
I grew up in southwest London. I had. I was very lucky to grow up in the Methodist Ministers Training College where my father was a tutor. So we had a lot of space. I had a big old building that I could run around and explore and one of the big London parks just as almost my back garden. It was. It was a great place to grow up.
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Interviewer
Growing up, we'll explore and talk about your brother because obviously this he's basically the reason why you ended up where you were. But Peter was your, your older brother. Can you tell me about growing up with Peter as an older brother?
- [06:27]
Michael Thexton
So Peter was. Well, he was about six years older than me and I. I can't remember much about our early years together, but he went to boarding school. He was, he was quite difficult as a, as a small child. My parents didn't really know what to do with him. They ended up sending him away to boarding school when he was about 8 or 9.
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Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
Wow.
- [06:54]
Michael Thexton
And it's funny, when we were clearing out my mother's house when she, after she'd gone into a care home and we found lots of old letters, including letters that he wrote from boarding school when he'd just gone there, you know, when he was sort of 8 or 9. And a letter to me, you know, described me as his best pal. And I don't remember that. No. I, he obviously wrote letters to me. And the thing was that I, I sort of. I worshiped him.
- [07:25]
Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
Growing up, Michael had three siblings. Of course, there was Peter, his older brother, and, and two sisters, one older and one younger. Michael and his sisters wouldn't be sent to boarding school like their older brother. By the time they came along, Michael's parents had decided that boarding school probably wasn't the right decision. Michael believes his parents always regretted sending Peter. However, it would be while at boarding school that his brother discovered what would become his life's passion.
- [07:51]
Michael Thexton
At boarding school, he started climbing. It became his passion. He. He was in the Boy Scouts and they did, they went camping and then they did small rock climbing. And gradually it became the thing that he really wanted to do. So he went. When he stopped coming on family holidays, he would be off camping in Scotland or camping in the Alps in, in, you know, France or Switzerland and climbing bigger and bigger mountains. And that was his passion.
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Interviewer
Very adventurous guy. And I think you sort of said in the past that you weren't as much of as the adventurous type as your brother was.
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Michael Thexton
No, it was. I wanted to be, obviously, you know, people want to be what their heroes are. And so I, I used to, you know, I tried rock climbing when I was at university. I have a couple of good friends and we, we went rock climbing and we went rock climbing with my brother. And I realized fairly quickly that I just don't have the head for. The head for heights. I couldn't do it.
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Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
Peter would go on to become a doctor, a profession that would allow him to continue to follow his passion of climbing. Because as a junior Doctor you would do a six month rotation of jobs. So Peter would work for six months and then take six months off to go climbing.
- [09:16]
Michael Thexton
Most doctors sort of move on from that quite quickly and start taking longer jobs, but he didn't. He just carried on doing these six month junior doctor jobs. I think when he went on his last expedition he was just coming to the point where he thought, I have to grow up a bit now. I have to do. I have to get serious about this.
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Interviewer
Michael, you could say, was almost the
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Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
polar opposite to his brother when it came to the adventurous nature. He was more comfortable in civilization as opposed to climbing mountains and camping on the side of cliffs. Michael was always good with numbers and eventually that would lead him into the profession of an accountant and he was very successful at it.
- [09:56]
Michael Thexton
And I went off and studied as a junior accountant and did all my exams. And during that time, accountants that get a very bad rap that they're all very dull and so on, I guess I thought that, well, Peter was out there doing interesting things and I could enjoy his, you know, his travelers tales and his slideshows and that was fine. You know, I didn't mind that. I was just sort of, you know, going to the office and doing my exam. That was, I GUESS that was three years from 1980 to 1983 while I was, I was studying and doing exams.
- [10:41]
Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
During this period. Michael says that a colleague had brought in a climbing magazine and there on the front cover was his big brother.
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Michael Thexton
And he looked so ripped. And all of the girls, you know, were looking at this picture and sort of looking at me and thinking, this is your brother, this is. And so was I. And at that time, while I was studying my final exams, he was off in northern Pakistan on an expedition that was supposed to climb K2. Yeah, and, and, and he didn't come back.
- [11:19]
Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
Chapter 2 the easy one K2 isn't just another mountain. It rises out of the ranges on the border of Pakistan and China. A jagged pyramid of rock and ice that feels almost hostile in its shape. Sharp, rigid lines, steep faces, no gentle slopes. Certainly no easy way up. At over 8,600 metres, it's the second highest mountain on Earth. But many climbers will tell you it's the most dangerous. Steeper than Everest. Less predictable, less forgiving. Just getting to K2 is an expedition in itself. There are no roads leading to base camp, no helicopters dropping you neatly at the foot of the mountain. You trek for days through glaciers and narrow valleys surrounded by walls of rock that make you feel small. Long before the Climbing even begins at base camp. The air already feels thin. Every movement takes more effort. Your breath is shallow. Your body never quite settles. Even standing still, your heart works harder than it. The landscape is brutal, but beautiful at the same time. Endless ice, grey rock, snow that never truly melts. The wind cuts straight through your clothing. And when it dies down, the silence feels almost unsettling. There's no life here. No trees, no birds. Just a mountain watching. As climbers move higher, higher, the conditions only worsen. Temperatures plunge well below freezing. Oxygen levels drop to a point where simple tasks like tying a knot or zipping up your jacket become exhausting. Your thoughts slow and mistakes become easier to make. And on a mountain like K2, mistakes are rarely survivable. This isn't a place that allows hesitation or weakness or bad luck. It's known among climbers as the Savage Mountain, A reputation earned through decades of avalanches, sudden storms, and routes that offer almost no margin for error. It's a dangerous place to be. Many have died. And this was the mountain that Michael's brother Peter was planning to conquer. However, before K2, they would tackle another mountain, a less extreme one, a mountain designed for acclimatization.
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Michael Thexton
So he was on an expedition which was led by Al Rouse and Doug Scott, who are both famous British climbers. And they had, they collected together a group of other, other climbers. Pete made great friends with a man called Greg Child, who we'd not met before the expedition. And they climbed together. They climbed with Doug Scott a mountain called Lobsang Spire, which is not that high, but is, is a very difficult technical rock climb. But then they moved on to base of K2, got K2 sort of standing on one side and then this other mountain, Broad Peak, which is One of the 8,000 meter peaks, there are 14 peaks that are over 8,8000 meters. And it's regarded as the easy one, you know, I mean, you get over 8,000 meters, you are dying. But Broad Peak is sort of considered just a walk. And so they were going to practice on that and get used to what it was like being at that altitude without the technical difficulty. Because K2 is considered probably the hardest of all the 8000 meter peaks, harder than Everest to get up. And so they were climbing this mountain in pairs. Pete climbed with Greg and they would go up to a top camp which is something like 22,000ft. And then the idea was that they would climb to the top, come back down to that camp, come down, and once they'd all done that, they would go and climb K2 Pete and Greg
- [15:35]
Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
spend the night at the top camp and in the early hours of the morning made their way to the top ridge at around 8,000 meters where you traverse along the ridge for around 30 minutes before you then descend back down. However, while on that ridge they hit a problem.
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Michael Thexton
Greg started to be ill. He was complaining that his headache, I mean you always have a headache at that altitude. But his headache was getting worse. He was wondering whether he was getting cerebral edema, which is the leaking of fluid into the, into the brain, acute mountain sickness. And so they had a discussion and Pete of course being the doctor, he was trying to assess how ill Greg was. Greg said, well look, I'll just sit here, you walk to the top, come back again. And Pete said, no, no, we've got to go down. You know, you, you could be really ill here and the only way to treat acute mountain sickness is to go down. So they turned around and started down and as they went down, Greg got better and Pete got worse. Greg has written an account of it which I have read probably twice in my life and it makes me cry. In fact it makes me almost cry even thinking about it. They ended up in the dark with Greg lifting and lowering Pete rope length by rope length. I mean it's just a completely epic descent. They got back to the top camp at 2 o' clock in the morning. They found another famous British climber, Don Willems, waiting there with a high altitude porter.
- [17:21]
Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
Greg Child is an Australian born American who would go on to write a book called Mixed Emotions. Mountaineering Writings of Greg Child where he documents many of his climbing expeditions and the loss of friends, including the death of Michael's brother Peter. At this point in time, however, he was utterly exhausted from bringing his friend single handedly down the mountain alive, but extremely unwell. Peter is placed into a sleeping bag in a tent. Come morning he wakes up and asks for a drink. However, tragically, by the time they return, Peter has died.
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Michael Thexton
And he died of pulmonary edema which is the leaking of fluid into the lungs, a different version of acute mountain sickness. And they had to bury him there. You know, they had to put him in a crevasse in his sleeping bag because they obviously couldn't get him down. Was hard enough getting him down when he was still alive, but they couldn't bring his body down when he was dead. And that was, that was the last day or just about the last day of June 1983. And of course, I mean one of the strangest things about that, I, I was, I was still on my exam course, I was. I knew none of this. It took two weeks for that news to get out. And the. The leaders of the expedition sent Greg and another person down the mountain as quickly as possible because they wanted, if possible, to get the truth out before rumors started to filter out that a British climber had died. And so they. They trekked out as fast as possible. Ended up making a phone call to Doug Scott's wife, who phoned my parents. And that was two weeks later. And I had, in that time, sat my final exams, you know, which I would not have been able to do if I'd known what was going on in, In Pakistan. It was. It was an utterly miserable time. I mean, we all came together, we looked after each other. There's a thing about remembering how much you love the rest of your family when you lost somebody, but. But it was. It was miserable.
- [19:56]
Interviewer
How long had it been since you'd seen your brother? When was the last time you'd seen him? Before he went away on this trip?
- [20:01]
Michael Thexton
I think I was there when we took him to the airport. So I guess we took him to the airport at the beginning of May or the very end of April to catch the plane to Pakistan.
- [20:12]
Interviewer
How did your parents feel about him doing these sorts of expeditions and the, the mountain climbing and all the rest of it?
- [20:18]
Michael Thexton
It's one of those things that as a. As a young man without children of my own, you know, I never really understood what my parents must have felt. Yeah. And then later you think, oh, oh, you know, you worry about your children when they go to the shops.
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Interviewer
Yeah, absolutely.
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Michael Thexton
My parents worried about him. Of course they did. And he was doing. He'd been doing dangerous things for years and they sort of got used to it and accepted that that was what he did. You know, it was. It was the thing that made him who he was. And they couldn't sort of ask him not to do it, but it was. It was obviously shattering for them and, you know, it was shattering for. For all of us. My older sister, who was closer in age to him, she was just sort of two and a half years younger than him, so. So the two of a pair for quite a while before I turned up. She told me not long ago, actually, that she lied to herself. She couldn't bear to admit that he was gone. You know, she would tell herself that he was still out there in Pakistan, still climbing the mountain.
- [21:29]
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- [21:59]
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- [22:52]
Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
Chapter 4 Would you like to be the base camp manager? After his brother's passing, Michael and his family continued on as best they could with life. Michael would finish his studies doing extremely well with a glittering career ahead. However, by that stage, it was a career he no longer wanted.
- [23:17]
Michael Thexton
You know, I spent a year, I guess, working in the training department of the firm that I was in because I was good at exams. So the idea was I would help the next lot pass their exams and then I was supposed to go on and be the rising star of the firm. And during that year I just realized that I. What, what happened next as an accountancy firm just did not appeal to me at all. And I thought I would do something more interesting with my life.
- [23:48]
Interviewer
So what happened to your brother made you think.
- [23:50]
Michael Thexton
I mean, I might have. I might have thought that anyway, it became less acceptable to just follow this. This path that was laid out for me because Pete wasn't there anymore. And I mean, you know, the sad thing is I obviously wasn't going to become a mountaineer.
- [24:08]
Interviewer
That.
- [24:09]
Michael Thexton
That was impossible because I don't have the head heights. What I decided to do, rather sadly was was become a best selling novelist. I read a book by Jeffrey Archer and thought, wow, that looks pretty easy. And so I, I wrote. I wrote a book and a friend of mine read it and he said. He said, well, I don't think you should leave your day job. I then went into teaching accountants because that was a job a bit like Pete's jobs. You could teach a course for accountants and then you could take a couple of months off if you wanted to and do something else. And I decided that I would try and do some adventurous things. So I went to China as a backpacker in the summer of 1985. I don't really have the appetite for being a backpacker either. It was. That was pretty hard. But, you know, at least. At least I'd sort of done something. I'd gone somewhere interesting and come back with some travelers tales. And that was. That could have been what I would do after that.
- [25:13]
Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
That summer, some of the students from the medical school where Peaked had trained as a doctor as well as where he'd been a leading light of the mountaineering climbing club that was also run from St. Mary's Hospital got in touch with the family to ask if they would be happy for them to hold what they were calling the Thexton Memorial Expedition.
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Michael Thexton
And so they had an expedition in his memory which went to Kenya and they climbed Mount Kenya. My friends who I'd gone climbing with with Pete, they happened to be also in Kenya that summer. And, you know, I got a postcard from them saying, have met the Pete Dexter Memorial Expedition. Pete will be turning in his grave. That these guys were. Were perhaps not quite as competent climbers as. As Peter had been. But at the beginning of 1986, they said, you know, we had a really good trip to Kenya and we are going to go to Lobsang Spire, this last mountain that Pete climbed. And we're going to, you know, this is the area where Pete died. Would Mike like to come and be the base camp manager? So I was supposed to be the base camp manager. Obviously I had to go, you know, there's no way I was not going to take that opportunity. I would never get another opportunity to go to the place they weren't planning to go to, Base camp Abroad Peak. But it's only sort of. Only a couple of days further on from where we were going to be based. And so we reckoned I could probably walk up there with. With some companions. And so that's what we did in, in July of 1986. The thing that I find amazing now, looking back, I suddenly thought my parents took me to the airport, you Know, exactly the same as they had taken Pete to the airport and, and they never said a word. And I, in my, you know, in my youthful innocence, never occurred to me what they might be thinking, you know, but obviously they were thinking, he's not coming back, you know, but, but he has to go. Right? They never tried to talk me out of it, that, that I, I, I still think of as being the most extra.
- [27:39]
Interviewer
So July of 1986, I was opening my eyes for the very first time in this world. Mike. Not to make you feel old, sir, that's exactly, that's exactly my birthday. July 1986, you were jumping on a plane and heading off to Pakistan. What was your sort of the motions for that? Was it excitement? You know, did you have any nerves about it?
- [28:01]
Michael Thexton
Yeah, it was a very emotional thing because to it it's like, you know, like a pilgrimage in every sense, in that you're going to a place that's, that's very meaningful and it's really hard to get there, I think, I think these days you can drive in quite a bit further. But in those days it was six days of hard walking. I mean, really hard walking. I would, I was not as fit as all of the climbers. I tried to do some preparation but, but it was, it was a, a total shock. I mean, we would get up in the morning, sort of three or four o'clock in the dark. There was no water that you could drink beyond what you were carrying. I mean, it was, it was just brutal. And then you spend a lot of time walking by this river, the Braldu river, which comes down out of the Baltoro Glacier. It's a huge raging torrent of meltwater and you can hear it, rolling boulders in it. You know, it's like sort of grinding of teeth. And I knew that in 1978, Pete had been going on a different expedition up that river and one of his fellow climbers had been carried into the river by a landslip. Pete was the only person with him and Pete had tried to pull him out of the river and the guy had died in his arms. And Pete then had to decide what to do and, you know, go and find the others and say Patsy died in the river, you know. And so walking beside the Browdh was really scary and emotional. And then you come round a corner and you can see in the very far distance the top of Broad Peak, miles and miles and miles away. And you walk towards it slowly over
- [29:53]
Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
days, for a couple of weeks. Michael is at the Erdekas base camp. Where all of a sudden the stark realization of just how dangerous the area was comes to the forefront and news arrives at camp of more tragedy.
- [30:08]
Michael Thexton
I, I was there. News came down from K2 base camp that Al Raus, who was Pete's friend, who was the patron of our expedition, who'd been on the 1983 expedition, Al Rouse, had died up the mountain up on K2. And so I knew another friend of Pete's, filmmaker called Jim Curran. I knew he was up at K2 base camp. I walked up with a couple of friends to see if we could find Jim Curran because reckon he would be on his own and, and that, that was extraordinary. Just sort of walking in the middle of this shattered wasteland. And then here this familiar face comes over the, over the skyline and there's Jim Curran. And we walk back with him and listen to him talking, you know, about the loss of Al Rous.
- [31:00]
Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
Eventually, Michael and some other members of his group would make the walk up to the Broad Peak Base Camp to his brother's final resting place. So he's able to say goodbye. And while there, he bumps into a group of Australian soldiers.
- [31:13]
Michael Thexton
They were doing some very long term acclimatization because they were planning a, an expedition to Everest for the bicentennial of Australia, which was going to happen in 1988, I believe. And so I was, they were giving us dinner because we were just sort of visiting, visiting Pommy climbers. And their doctor was talking to me and he said, he said, well, I've been, I've been monitoring all the people who've been going up Broad Peak and I mean, it's incredible. They come back down. I asked them how did it go? And they say, oh, well, you know, it was fine, absolutely no problem at all. Because they're all Australian soldiers, you know, and they're not going to admit to any weakness.
- [31:56]
Interviewer
Yeah, of course.
- [31:57]
Michael Thexton
And then I say, who were you climbing with? And they can't remember. How long did it take you to get from here to there? And they can't remember. And, and he's, he's saying, you know, I'm really conscious of what happened to Dr. Peter Thakston on Broad Peak three years ago. And I said, he's my brother and it was amazing to have him remembered by someone else at the foot of the mountain. Yeah, it was appropriate and it was a fantastic thing. But it remains, I think, the hardest thing I have ever done. Walking to Broad Peak Base Camp and
- [32:31]
Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
back, Michael Thexton had done what he set out to do and to say he was ready to go home was an understatement. And in fact he would be handed the perfect excuse to say goodbye to the expedition early and head home as soon as possible.
- [32:47]
Michael Thexton
And I worked out the days when they said that I was expected to be teaching. That was the day that our flight was getting home.
- [32:56]
Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
Michael manages to get himself the last ticket in town to fly back towards home. Of course, little did he know at the time that that flight home would be life changing.
- [33:09]
Michael Thexton
And I said to him, I said, please don't hurt me. My brother died in the mountains. My parents have no one else. Please don't hurt me.
- [33:17]
Narrator/Host (Jack Lawrence)
Next time on what I Survived.
- [33:21]
Musician/Singer
I'm looking at the moon in the sky. This shouldn't come as a surprise, but I can sleep War in my mind I'm trying to fight a war in my mind I don't know who's the winner tonight, but it ain't this episode
- [33:56]
Podcast Sponsor/Advertiser
is brought to you by Progressive Insurance Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, Monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. When it comes to managing money, forget the hype and look at the results. Bill has a trillion dollars of secure payments powering our BillPay tools. Instead of just moving money, Bill is powering the financial operations of nearly half a million customers. So stop the guesswork and start scaling with the proven choice. Ready to talk with an expert? Visit bill.comproven to get started and grab a $250 gift card as a thank you. Terms and conditions apply. See Offer page for details.
- [34:48]
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