Kunal takes pains to ensure that apart from the hijacking, nothing is similar to the Pan Am incident or that Esha Deol's character is based on that of Neerja Bhanot (who was the senior flight-purser on the Pan Am Flight 73). He says, "Esha's character is fictional as is Hijack. The characters in Hijack have been taken from various hijacking incidents. In Hijack, the hijacked plane is not a Boeing 747 but a Tristar which gets hijacked in Chandigarh while travelling from Delhi to Amritsar."
Pan American World Airways Pan Am Flight 73 was hijacked on Sept 5, 1986, by four armed men of the Abu Nidal Organisation. The Boeing 747 with 360 on board had just arrived from Mumbai and was preparing to depart via Karachi International Airport in Pakistan for Frankfurt Airport, on to John F Kennedy Airport in NYC.
At least 20 died during the hijacking and over 120 passengers were wounded in the assault. Neerja Bhanot was the senior flight purser on the ill-fated flight. She hid the passports of the passengers on the flight so that the hijackers could not differentiate between Americans and non-Americans. Neerja laid down her life while shielding three children from the bullets fired by the terrorists.