Three decades have passed since Pan Am Flight 103 blew up over the town of Lockerbie.

On December 21, 1988, all 243 passengers and 16 crew members perished when the New York-bound Boeing 747 went down over Dumfries and Galloway, 38 minutes after take-off from London.

Another 11 people in Lockerbie itself were killed by falling wreckage.

Here, we tell some of the stories to have emerged since that fateful night.

Many would-be passengers remain thankful that fate forced them to miss the doomed flight.

A punk rock icon, Hollywood actress and Motown band were due to board, but due to different reasons failed to take their seats.

Johnny Rotten, The Sex Pistols' frontman, didn't board after a fight with his wife.

The punk legend, real name John Lydon, said: "We only missed the flight because Nora hadn't packed in time. We had a big row and then took the next flight out.

"The minute we realised what happened, we just looked at each other and almost collapsed."

Sex and the City star Kim Cattrall was also originally booked on the Pan Am flight, but changed her reservation at the last minute to go shopping at Harrods.

The decision saved her life.

She said: "I decided to take another flight because I had neglected to go to Harrods and buy a teapot for my mother."

The Four Tops, the quartet who helped define the Motown sound, also missed the flight after a Top of the Pops producer stopped them from boarding.

Band member Duke Fakir said: "We had two shows to do and we were going to record them at the same time.

"One of them was not going out until New Year's Eve and the producer didn't want us to play them at the same time. He wouldn't have it.

"So the producer on Top of the Pops was the reason we didn't get on that plane.

"And I was glad - so, so glad - that we didn't do it in one session."

The band left London later on a British Airways flight.

Other would-be passengers to miss the flight include Kim Wickham, Jaswant Basuta and Krystyna Ivell.

New Yorker Ms Wickham was at Heathrow Airport and was scheduled to board Pan Am Flight 103 with her friends Nicole Boulanger and Ken Bissett.

However, she decided to visit friends in Germany and changed her flight at the last minute.

American Mr Basuta had been in the UK for a family wedding. He made it to Heathrow on time, but relatives seeing him off took him for a drink.

Before he knew it, the gate had closed and he missed the flight by seconds.

Mr Basuta became the first suspect in the case when police discovered his luggage had made it onto the flight, but was later exonerated.

Ms Ivell's 19-year-old daughter, Eli, was one of the bombing's victims.

The pair had been invited to spend Christmas in New York with a family friend, but because they could not afford the flights they signed up to a courier scheme that offered a discount in return for carrying documents to the Big Apple.

As standard practice is for only one courier to accompany a load, a second flight was booked for the following day.

The mum and daughter tossed a coin to see who would get an extra day in New York. Eli "won" and boarded Pan Am Flight 103.

To this day, remnants of the wreckage is stored at a scrapyard near Tattershall, Lincolnshire, where it was taken after the disaster.

Eight lorry loads transported the wreckage from an army base in Longtown near Carlisle after it was collected all over Lockerbie.

The remains include the nose section of the Boeing 747, cut into several pieces to allow it to be transported.

Insurance firm Lloyds hired Windley's Salvage to store most of the scrap metal.

One large piece of fuselage remains in the keeping of the Air Accidents Investigation Branch and is still being used as evidence in the ongoing criminal case review.

There are several private and public memorials to the PA103 victims.

Dark Elegy is the work of sculptor Susan Lowenstein of Long Island, whose son Alexander, then 21, was a passenger on the flight.

The work consists of 43 nude statues of the wives and mothers who lost a husband or a child.

Inside each sculpture there is a personal memento of the victim.

The main UK memorial is at Dryfesdale Cemetery near Lockerbie.

There is a semicircular stone wall in the garden of remembrance with the names and nationalities of all the victims along with individual funeral stones and memorials.

In November 1995, then-US President Bill Clinton dedicated a memorial cairn to the victims at Arlington National Cemetery, and there are similar memorials at Syracuse University in New York and in Sherwood Crescent, Lockerbie.

Syracuse University holds a remembrance week every year to commemorate its 35 lost students, while in 1989 a charity football match was arranged for the benefit of the disaster appeal fund.

The game took place at Palmerston Park, the ground of Queen of the South, the nearest senior football club to Lockerbie.

Opposition was provided by Manchester United and managed by Sir Alex Ferguson.

The final score was 6-3 to Manchester United.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi remains the only person convicted for the attack. Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah was also tried, but was acquitted.

The case was heard in the Netherlands - but the court was Scottish.

In November 1991, the suspects were initially indicted by US and British investigators on 270 counts of murder, conspiracy to murder and violating Britain's 1982 Aviation Security Act.

They were accused of being Libyan intelligence agents.

In April 1992, the United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions on air travel and arms sales to Libya, over Libya's refusal to hand them over for trial in a Scottish court.

A special sitting of the High Court of Justiciary was then set up under Scots law in a former United States Air Force base called Camp Zeist in Utrecht, in the Netherlands.

A school was converted into a judicial court for the trial.

The court was established in a neutral country as part of a deal between Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and the British government, before Gaddafi would allow the extradition of the two accused.

Libya handed over the suspects in April 1999 and the trial began on May 3, 2000.

Dutch law still theoretically applied to the area, but, barring an emergency, the Dutch authorities were banned from entering the premises and the court had the authority to enact regulations that superseded Dutch law and to jail people for contempt of court.

The court itself, as well as people involved in the trial, also enjoyed total or partial immunity from Dutch law.

In January 2001, Megrahi was found guilty of murder and jailed for a minimum of 27 years.

He was jailed in Scotland for eight years before being released on compassionate grounds in 2009 after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Right up until his death in 2012, Megrahi maintained his innocence.

In 2003, then-Libyan leader Gaddafi accepted responsibility for the atrocity and agreed to pay $2.7bn in compensation to the families of those killed in the bombing.