The TWA Flight 847 hijacking enters the diary not through a detailed account of the hijacking itself, but through a brief, unsettled report about the hostages’ status. On June 30, 1985, the news changes from freedom to its apparent reversal and back again, making the event a moment of uncertainty within an ordinary day’s record.

A Shifting News Report

The Sunday entry places the hostage updates amid the day’s other observations. After mentioning the Gay Day parade and a conversation with a cab driver, Andy Warhol notes that the hostages from TWA Flight 847 were free, then not free, and then free again. The compressed sequence records successive changes in the news without explaining what prompted them or adding details about the flight, the hijackers, or the hostages.

The Diary as a Record of the Day

The account belongs to a weekday-morning diary routine established by Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett. Their calls usually began around 9 a.m.; Warhol recounted the previous day and night, including expenses, while Hackett took notes and typed the entry soon after the call. Weekend activities were generally gathered into a Monday session, and the diary’s routine aimed to leave no day unrecorded. This method placed a major international news story beside small personal observations, without turning the entry into a separate report on the crisis.

The Event’s Place in the Entry

The entry’s treatment of the hijacking is notable for its brevity and its attention to changing information rather than explanation. Hackett later described an editorial aim of preserving Warhol’s distinctive voice and the casual intimacy of the diary while removing personal references that would make sense only between the two of them. In that published form, the hostage bulletin remains a passing but vivid instance of news as it reaches the diarist: urgent enough to register, yet unresolved within the entry itself.