On December 21, 1988, a passenger jet took off from London's Heathrow airport bound for JFK in New York.

Students were travelling home after a semester abroad. Families were reuniting for Christmas. Businessmen were finishing up for the holidays.

But the passengers on Pan Am flight 103 would never arrive at their intended destination.

Just after 7pm, the 747 lost contact with air traffic control.

A bomb had exploded, hidden in a cassette recorder in a suitcase in the hold of the plane.

The plane broke apart at 31,000ft, the cockpit and forward section landing around two miles outside of the small town of Lockerbie in the Scottish Borders.

The rest of the plane came down over the town, destroying homes, obliterating families, shattering the peace and quiet in the run up to the festivities.

All 259 passengers and crew on board perished, while 11 people on the ground were killed.

Ahead of the 30th anniversary of the bombing, STV News spoke to five people with deeply personal stories of that fateful night.

David Stewart was just 17 at the time, living on his father's farm on the outskirts of the town.

He was watching This Is Your Life when he heard the explosion, describing it like "a great big fire ball", with a mushroom cloud following afterwards.

A news report appeared on the television and told of the 747 which fell from the sky.

His father, who had been collecting the turkey for Christmas dinner, returned home and told the family the cockpit of the plane was lying in a neighbour's field.

Father and son drove out into the night to look for survivors, but David came across the body of a baby, a girl with blonde hair.

"I remember picking her up." he says.

"She was about two years old."

Describing herself as a 'rookie reporter', Kaye says she was around 23 when the Lockerbie bombing occurred.

She had worked at Central Television as a trainee for four years, joining STV in the summer of 1988.

In any other circumstances, Kaye would not have been the reporter on the scene.

Working the late shift and returning from a story about a meningitis vaccination programme, she was sent to Lockerbie after it was reported a military jet had crashed.

Travelling to the town, Kaye says she felt mounting anxiety with every call, as the scale of the disaster unfolded.

When confronted with the scene of devastation, she recalls the inches of debris on the road and the flames coming from the crater where part of the plane crashed.

She said it was like "the gates of hell".

In 1988, Father Patrick Keegans was the newly appointed priest in the town.

He was at his home with his mother in Sherwood Crescent and had plans to go out that evening.

He suddenly heard a loud noise "like a fighter jet" and then an explosion.

His house shook so violently, he thought he would die.

When he saw the destruction around him, he thought: "The children should have lived and I should have died."

He would go on to travel to the US to speak with the families of victims killed in the attack.

Victoria Cummock was not expecting her husband to arrive home for Christmas until December 22.

John had decided to fly home from business a day early.

Hearing the news that a plane had come down over Scotland, Victoria urged co-workers to say a prayer for the families of those affected.

"Little did I know, I was actually praying for myself and for my family," she says.

Her husband was in seat 3A, which was part of the front of the plane which landed in a field two-and-a-half miles outside of Lockerbie.

The attache case she had given him for their recent anniversary was in the foreground of the iconic images of the front of the plane where it had come to rest.

It was then she knew he had perished.

At just 18, Colin Dorrance was a probationary police officer.

He was attending a Christmas party in the south of the town when suddenly he heard a huge explosion.

People ran to the site of the crash and were met with a horrifying scene, passengers tangled in the debris and Christmas presents among the wreckage.

Colin assisted with the operation, the town hall used as a makeshift mortuary.

"The entire hall had bodies laid out on the floor, head to toe," he recalls.

Warning: this film reports on the aftermath of the Lockerbie bombing and contains footage from the scene of the impact which viewers may find upsetting.