Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988. All 259 people on board were killed, 35 of the passengers were students from Syracuse University returning home for Christmas.

Pan Am flight 103 was a passenger airliner that exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland 30 years ago after a bomb was detonated. Everyone on board was killed as well as 11 individuals on the ground. The 35 Syracuse University students were coming home for Christmas following a semester studying in London at Syracuse's London and Florence campuses.

Wikipedia...The aircraft operating the transatlantic leg of the route was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew – a disaster known as the Lockerbie bombing. Large sections of the aircraft crashed onto residential areas of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 11 people on the ground.

Following a three-year joint investigation by Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), arrest warrants were issued for two Libyan nationals in November 1991. In 1999, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi handed over the two men for trial at Camp Zeist, Netherlands, after protracted negotiations and UN sanctions. In 2001, Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was jailed for life after being found guilty of 270 counts of murder in connection with the bombing. In August 2009, he was released by the Scottish Government on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. He died in May 2012 as the only person to be convicted for the attack.

Wikipedia also says there were at least four US government officials on the passenger list with rumors, never confirmed, of a fifth on board. The presence of these men on the flight later gave rise to conspiracy theories, in which one or more of them were said to have been targeted

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