Traveller’s torment after she missed doomed jet flight

Scotland, US- born Kim tells of the horror of discovering two of her close friends were dead.

She said: “I was washing my face and I heard the phone ring and I walked over and picked it up and it was my grandmother.

“She said, ‘Kim is that you?’ and she was sounding a little off. I said ‘ What are you calling for, it’s the middle of the night’ and she proceeded to tell me my plane crashed.

“She told me what happened and I woke up my friend Claudia and she woke her parents and we turned on the TV and we saw flames everywhere. I thought ‘Oh my God, Ken, oh my God, Nicole’.”

Kim appears in Lockerbie – The Unheard Voices and tells how she contacted Pan Am and pretended to be Nicole’s sister in the aftermath of the bomb.

She was able to verify certain people on the plane and her worst fears were confirmed.

She said: “It was pretty clear there was no survivors and they were thinking it was terrorism but we really didn’t know. Nicole was just one of the brightest lights and one of the best people I ever met in my life and she inspired me so much.”

And she said Ken, who was adopted, was “so funny”.

Kim added: “Ken was like an old soul. He was very thoughtful, educated. He loved to read. He wanted to be a writer.”

Ken’s biological mother, Carol King-Eckersley and Kim have met and she has been able to share memories and photographs of Ken’s time in London.

Also featured in the documentar y is Jaswant Basuta, who became the first suspect in the aftermath of the bombing.

Telling his story for the first time, Jaswant explains how he checked in but never made his flight.

However, his suitcase was still on board. He had been in the UK for a family wedding and was returning to New Jersey to be with his wife and children.

He said: “I checked in my luggage. So many family members came to see me off. My brother said,’ You must have a beer with me’.”

Realising the time, he hugged his family and ran to catch his plane but he missed it with seconds to spare.

After being arrested and questioned he was eventually released to fly home – but his wife believed her husband had died in the crash.

He said: “It was a very long inter rogation and they couldn’t find anything and they said ‘ You have to stay here the night’. My wife wouldn’t believe I was alive because her father had confirmed I was on the plane.”

Several celebrities also missed the flight.

Sex Pistols frontman John Lydon and his wife Nora were due to be on the f light but Nora’s delay in packing meant they missed it.

He said: “She just couldn’t get the luggage together in time. So we cancelled the flight.” Sex and the City actress Kim Catrall, who had been filming The Return Of The Musketeers, decided to take another flight because

she had forgotten to go to Harrods