. Skyjacking

kyjacking is the illegal seizure of an airplane. It is a crime similar to hijacking a truck or taking over a ship at sea. Skyjackers may demand that the plane be flown to a destination of their choice or demand a ransom for the release of passengers. They may use the airplane as a weapon of destruction.

How Skyjacking Began

The first recorded skyjacking was in 1931 in Peru. Rebel soldiers forced two American pilots to fly a plane over the city of Lima to drop propaganda leaflets. The first skyjack in the United States

DISAPPEARING AIR PIRATE

Probably the most famous criminal sky­jacking in the United States happened in 1971. A man known as Dan or D. B. Cooper took over a Northwest Orient Airlines Boeing 727. After forcing the plane to land, he demanded $200,000 as ransom for the release of the passen­gers. When he had received the money and four parachutes (one each for him­self and the three remaining crew mem­bers), Cooper ordered the airplane to take off again. He parachuted from the rear of the Boeing 727 over the Cascade Mountains of the northwestern United States and was never seen again. There have been many suspects, but no certain culprit has ever been found.

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took place in 1961, when a passenger on a commercial flight from Miami to Key West, Florida, ordered the pilot to divert the aircraft to Communist-ruled Cuba.

With lax security at airports in the 1960s, it was relative­ly easy for a terrorist to smuggle a gun onto an air­liner to threaten the pilots and passengers. Skyjackers often had political motives.

Taking over an airliner ensured publicity for their cause. Less often, a skyjacker was a criminal who hoped to extort money by air piracy.

In the 1970s, when tension between Israel and its Arab neighbors was high, terrorists based in the Middle East made several attacks on airliners. Their usual practice was to seize an airliner in flight, force the pilot to land, and then broad­cast their demands by radio. Skyjackers held passengers inside the airplane as hostages, hoping to bargain for the release from jail of fellow terrorists or other prisoners.

In September 1970, a spectacular skyjacking took place in the Middle East, when Palestinian terrorists seized three airliners simultaneously. All three air­craft were landed in the Jordan desert at Dawson’s Field (a former British air force base) and then blown up after most of the hostages had been released. An attack on a fourth airplane was foiled by Israeli security guards. A fifth airplane was hijacked three days later.