LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 hijacking the Republic"), a crime under GDR law. Ruske and Tiede then concluded that they were trapped and that prison awaited them if they returned to East Germany. So they developed a plan to hijack a plane headed for East Berlin's Schönefeld Airport and force a landing at the U.S. Air Force base at Tempelhof Airport in West Berlin. They bought a toy starting pistol at a Polish flea market, and then booked three tickets on LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 from Gdańsk, Poland, to East Berlin. On 30 August 1978, Tiede and Ruske hijacked a Polish LOT Tupolev Tu-134 airliner
Airline codes accounting or prefix code. This number is used on tickets as the first three characters of the ticket number. The ICAO airline designator is a code assigned by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to aircraft operating agencies, aeronautical authorities, and services related to international aviation, each of whom is allocated both a "three-letter designator" and a "telephony designator". These codes are unique by airline, unlike the IATA airline designator codes (see section above). The designators are listed in ICAO Document 8585: "Designators for Aircraft Operating Agencies, Aeronautical Authorities and Services". ICAO codes have been issued since 1947. The ICAO