In 1970s There Were 17 Airplane Hijackings in the USA.
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In 1970s There Were 17 Airplane Hijackings in the USA.
And they were all solved with the exception of the D.B. Cooper hijacking.
The 70s were for sure crazy times.
March 17, 1970: Eastern Air Lines Shuttle Flight 1320, carrying passengers from Newark to Boston was hijacked around 7:30 P.M. by John J. Divivo who was armed with a .38 caliber revolver. Captain Robert Wilbur Jr., 35, a former Air Force pilot who had only been promoted to captain six months prior, was shot in his arm by the suicidal hijacker. His copilot, First Officer James Hartley, 31, was shot without warning by Divivo and collapsed. Divivo then turned the gun on the captain, causing an arm injury. Despite being fatally wounded, Hartley recovered sufficiently to rip the gun from Divivo's hand, and shoot the would-be hijacker three times before lapsing into unconsciousness, and eventually death. Although wounded and slumped between the seats, Divivo arose and began clawing at Captain Wilbur, attempting to force a crash. Wilbur hit Divivo over the head with the gun he had retrieved from the center console. With a .38 slug in his arm and bleeding profusely, he flew his aircraft safely to a landing while talking to the tower, telling them his copilot was shot (but not himself) and needed an ambulance. The pilot landed the plane safely at Logan International Airport, and the hijacker was arrested immediately.[30] On November 1, 1970, DiVivo hanged himself while awaiting trial at Charles Street Jail.
June 4, 1971—Glen Elmo Riggs, 58 years old, a retired coal miner from Ashford, W. Va. hijacked a United Airlines 737 jet and demanded to be flown to Israel. He was captured at Dulles International Airport when the flight engineer, acting on the advice of a psychiatrist in the control tower, talked the hijacker into giving up his pistol. The crew convinced him that the short‐haul, two‐engine 737 was incapable of such a long flight and landed their craft at Dulles—exactly one year after a gunfight ended another attempted hijacking.
November 8, 1971: Charles Hill, Ralph Lawernce, and Albert Finney were driving a carload of weapons to Louisiana as part of the Republic of New Afrika militant group. They murdered New Mexico State Police officer Robert Rosenbloom during a traffic stop and escaped to Albuquerque where they hijacked a TWA 727 to Cuba.
November 24, 1971: A man who became known as D. B. Cooper hijacked Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, a Boeing 727-100 aircraft flying from Portland, OR, to Seattle, WA, received US$200,000 in ransom, and parachuted from the plane. The actual name of the hijacker remains unknown. The hijacker revealed what appeared to be a bomb to a flight attendant and demanded the ransom and parachutes. The flight landed in Seattle, and FBI agents provided the ransom money and parachutes. Cooper then released all passengers and one flight attendant. After refueling, the aircraft took off again and flew toward Reno, NV. Cooper opened the aft stairs and jumped from the plane with a parachute during a heavy rainstorm. The aircraft was forced to land with the aft stairs deployed. The FBI believes Cooper most likely did not survive, but the case remains unsolved.
January 12, 1972: Braniff Flight 38, a Boeing 727, was hijacked as it departed Houston, Texas bound for Dallas, Texas. The lone armed hijacker, Billy Gene Hurst, Jr., allowed all 94 passengers to deplane after landing at Dallas Love Field but continued to hold the 7 crewmembers hostage, demanding to fly to South America and asking for US $2 million, parachutes, and jungle survival gear, amongst other items. After a 6-hour standoff, the entire crew secretly fled while Hurst was distracted examining the contents of a package delivered by Dallas police. Law enforcement officers stormed the craft shortly afterwards and arrested Hurst without serious incident.
January 28, 1972: TWA Flight 2, Los Angeles to New York, was hijacked by con man and bank robber Garrett Trapnell while over Chicago. Trapnell demanded $306,800 in cash (to recoup the loss of a recent court case), the release of Angela Davis (as well as that of a friend of his who was also imprisoned), and clemency from President Richard Nixon. The FBI retook the aircraft during a crew switch at Kennedy Airport; Trapnell was shot and wounded, no one else was hurt. Trapnell's hijacking came after a string of domestic incidents and resulted in an overhaul of flight procedures by the Nixon Administration, procedures that remained in place until the hijackings on September 11, 2001. Trapnell and unrelated hijacker Martin J. McNally (see June 23, 1972, below) attempted to escape Marion federal prison on May 24, 1978, after Trapnell's girlfriend Barbara Ann Oswald hijacked a helicopter and ordered it to Marion but that hijacking ended when the pilot grabbed the woman's gun and killed Oswald. On December 21, 1978, Oswald's 17-year-old daughter Robin Oswald hijacked TWA Flight 541 in another attempt to rescue Trapnell. She surrendered after 10 hours of negotiations at the airport in Marion.
May 5, 1972: Frederick Hahneman hijacked Eastern Airlines Flight 175 en route from Allentown, Pa, to Miami, Fl. After receiving $303,000, 6 parachutes and two cartons of cigarettes he ordered the pilot to fly to Honduras, his birth country, where he parachuted over the jungle and disappeared. A manhunt by the FBI and Honduran police, plus a $25,000 bounty from the airline eventually led to his surrender.
June 3, 1972: Western Airlines Flight 701 from Los Angeles to Seattle was hijacked by Willie Roger Holder, a black Vietnam veteran, and Catherine Marie Kerkow, his white girlfriend. The hijackers claimed they had a bomb in an attaché case and demanded $500,000. After allowing all 97 passengers to get off in San Francisco, they flew to Algeria where they were granted political asylum. The Algerian government confiscated and returned $488,000 of the ransom money to US officials.
June 23, 1972: In the 9th copycat D.B. Cooper-style hijacking Martin J. McNally under the pseudonym of Robert W. Wilson hijacked American Airlines Flight 119, a Boeing 727 bound from St. Louis to Tulsa and demanded $502,500. The plane flew back and forth between Tulsa and St. Louis while the loot was raised. In St. Louis, live news reports about the hijacking prompted David J. Hanley, a 30-year-old businessman, to crash his 1972 Cadillac at 80 mph through two airport fences, travel down the runway at high speed and crash into the nosegear of the plane, which was beginning to taxi. The demolished car lodged under the fuselage and one wing. Hanley suffered multiple injuries and was charged with willfully damaging a civil aircraft. The hijacker transferred to a new 727 and jumped out of the plane over Indiana. The full loot bag and gun were discovered by searchers near Peru, Indiana. Fingerprints led to McNally. While in Marion Federal Prison McNally and fellow inmate and hijacker Garrett Trapnell (see January 28, 1972 above) were involved in an attempted prison escape on May 24, 1978, after Trapnell's girlfriend hijacked a helicopter. The escape attempt ended when the helicopter pilot grabbed the woman's gun and killed her. McNally was paroled from prison January 27, 2010
July 5, 1972: Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 710 was hijacked by two Bulgarian immigrants shortly after take-off from Sacramento, California en route to San Francisco. The hijackers demanded $800,000, two parachutes and to be flown to the Soviet Union. The hijacking ended on the runway in San Francisco when agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation stormed the plane killing both hijackers and one passenger. Two other passengers were wounded. These were the first passengers killed and wounded in a skyjacking in the United States.
July 31, 1972: Delta Airlines Flight 841 was hijacked by five members of the Black Liberation Army including the elusive George Wright. The flight was originally from Detroit to Miami. The hijackers exchanged the passengers for $1 million in Miami and forced the plane to fly to Boston, then to Algeria, who returned the plane and cash but released the hijackers.
November 10, 1972: Southern Airways Flight 49, was hijacked by three men and flown to multiple locations in the United States, and one Canadian city. At one point, the hijackers threatened to fly the plane into the nuclear reactor at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, if their demands for $10 million in cash were not met. While stopped for refueling at McCoy Air Force Base, Orlando, the FBI shot out the plane's tires, prompting the hijackers to force pilot William Haas to take off. The hijacking came to an end when the plane landed on a partially foam-covered runway in Havana, Cuba, and the hijackers were captured after attempting to escape.
February 22, 1974: At Baltimore/Washington International Airport Samuel Byck shot and killed Maryland Aviation Administration Police Officer George Neal Ramsburg before storming Delta Airlines Flight 523 to Atlanta. When informed by pilots Reese (Doug) Loftin and Fred Jones they could not take off until wheel blocks were removed, he shot them both and grabbed a nearby passenger, ordering her to "fly the plane." Jones died as he was being removed from the aircraft after the event was concluded; Byck was mortally wounded when Charles Troyer, an Anne Arundel County police officer on the jetway, stormed the plane and fired four shots through the aircraft door at with a .357 Magnum revolver taken from the deceased Ramsburg. Two of the shots penetrated the thick window of the aircraft door and wounded Byck. Before the police could gain entry to the aircraft, Byck committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. Byck's motive was to hijack the aircraft and crash it into the White House, in an assassination attempt on President Richard Nixon
September 10, 1976: TWA Flight 355 was hijacked by Croatian separatists. Some passengers were allowed to deplane in Canada before the hijackers continued on to Iceland, then France, where they released the remaining passengers and surrendered to authorities. One New York police officer was killed while working on a bomb which the hijackers had planted at Grand Central Station.
March 13, 1978: United Flight 696 was hijacked by a lone American immediately after takeoff out of SFO. The aircraft landed in Oakland and the release of cabin crew and passengers was negotiated by the flight crew. The fueling was cut short by the hijacker and Flt 696 took off only partially refueled. Flight 696 landed in Denver to take on more fuel for Cuba. While waiting for the fuel, the cockpit crew jumped from the cockpit to escape the hijacker. The hijacker surrendered to the FBI within minutes of the crew's escape. No fatalities but the three cockpit crew-members suffered fractures and torn cartilage from the two-story leap.
December 21, 1978: 17-year-old Robin Oswald hijacked TWA Flight 541 flying from Louisville to Kansas City claiming she had three sticks of dynamite. The plane landed at Williamson County Regional Airport where she hoped to seek the release of Garrett Trapnell who was serving time at Marion Federal Penitentiary. Trapnell was serving time for a January 28, 1972 hijacking (see January 28, 1972 above). On May 24, 1978 her mother Barbara Ann Oswald was killed after hijacking a helicopter in an attempt to rescue Trapnell. Robin eventually surrendered at the Williamson Airport. The dynamite was revealed to be flares.
June 20, 1979: Nikola Kavaja, a Serbian nationalist and anti-communist hijacked American Airlines Flight 293. During the hijacking, Kavaja demanded and received another airplane with the intent of crashing it into the headquarters of the Yugoslav Communist Party. His lawyer convinced him to surrender after landing at Shannon Airport, Ireland.
The 70s were for sure crazy times.
March 17, 1970: Eastern Air Lines Shuttle Flight 1320, carrying passengers from Newark to Boston was hijacked around 7:30 P.M. by John J. Divivo who was armed with a .38 caliber revolver. Captain Robert Wilbur Jr., 35, a former Air Force pilot who had only been promoted to captain six months prior, was shot in his arm by the suicidal hijacker. His copilot, First Officer James Hartley, 31, was shot without warning by Divivo and collapsed. Divivo then turned the gun on the captain, causing an arm injury. Despite being fatally wounded, Hartley recovered sufficiently to rip the gun from Divivo's hand, and shoot the would-be hijacker three times before lapsing into unconsciousness, and eventually death. Although wounded and slumped between the seats, Divivo arose and began clawing at Captain Wilbur, attempting to force a crash. Wilbur hit Divivo over the head with the gun he had retrieved from the center console. With a .38 slug in his arm and bleeding profusely, he flew his aircraft safely to a landing while talking to the tower, telling them his copilot was shot (but not himself) and needed an ambulance. The pilot landed the plane safely at Logan International Airport, and the hijacker was arrested immediately.[30] On November 1, 1970, DiVivo hanged himself while awaiting trial at Charles Street Jail.
June 4, 1971—Glen Elmo Riggs, 58 years old, a retired coal miner from Ashford, W. Va. hijacked a United Airlines 737 jet and demanded to be flown to Israel. He was captured at Dulles International Airport when the flight engineer, acting on the advice of a psychiatrist in the control tower, talked the hijacker into giving up his pistol. The crew convinced him that the short‐haul, two‐engine 737 was incapable of such a long flight and landed their craft at Dulles—exactly one year after a gunfight ended another attempted hijacking.
November 8, 1971: Charles Hill, Ralph Lawernce, and Albert Finney were driving a carload of weapons to Louisiana as part of the Republic of New Afrika militant group. They murdered New Mexico State Police officer Robert Rosenbloom during a traffic stop and escaped to Albuquerque where they hijacked a TWA 727 to Cuba.
November 24, 1971: A man who became known as D. B. Cooper hijacked Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, a Boeing 727-100 aircraft flying from Portland, OR, to Seattle, WA, received US$200,000 in ransom, and parachuted from the plane. The actual name of the hijacker remains unknown. The hijacker revealed what appeared to be a bomb to a flight attendant and demanded the ransom and parachutes. The flight landed in Seattle, and FBI agents provided the ransom money and parachutes. Cooper then released all passengers and one flight attendant. After refueling, the aircraft took off again and flew toward Reno, NV. Cooper opened the aft stairs and jumped from the plane with a parachute during a heavy rainstorm. The aircraft was forced to land with the aft stairs deployed. The FBI believes Cooper most likely did not survive, but the case remains unsolved.
January 12, 1972: Braniff Flight 38, a Boeing 727, was hijacked as it departed Houston, Texas bound for Dallas, Texas. The lone armed hijacker, Billy Gene Hurst, Jr., allowed all 94 passengers to deplane after landing at Dallas Love Field but continued to hold the 7 crewmembers hostage, demanding to fly to South America and asking for US $2 million, parachutes, and jungle survival gear, amongst other items. After a 6-hour standoff, the entire crew secretly fled while Hurst was distracted examining the contents of a package delivered by Dallas police. Law enforcement officers stormed the craft shortly afterwards and arrested Hurst without serious incident.
January 28, 1972: TWA Flight 2, Los Angeles to New York, was hijacked by con man and bank robber Garrett Trapnell while over Chicago. Trapnell demanded $306,800 in cash (to recoup the loss of a recent court case), the release of Angela Davis (as well as that of a friend of his who was also imprisoned), and clemency from President Richard Nixon. The FBI retook the aircraft during a crew switch at Kennedy Airport; Trapnell was shot and wounded, no one else was hurt. Trapnell's hijacking came after a string of domestic incidents and resulted in an overhaul of flight procedures by the Nixon Administration, procedures that remained in place until the hijackings on September 11, 2001. Trapnell and unrelated hijacker Martin J. McNally (see June 23, 1972, below) attempted to escape Marion federal prison on May 24, 1978, after Trapnell's girlfriend Barbara Ann Oswald hijacked a helicopter and ordered it to Marion but that hijacking ended when the pilot grabbed the woman's gun and killed Oswald. On December 21, 1978, Oswald's 17-year-old daughter Robin Oswald hijacked TWA Flight 541 in another attempt to rescue Trapnell. She surrendered after 10 hours of negotiations at the airport in Marion.
May 5, 1972: Frederick Hahneman hijacked Eastern Airlines Flight 175 en route from Allentown, Pa, to Miami, Fl. After receiving $303,000, 6 parachutes and two cartons of cigarettes he ordered the pilot to fly to Honduras, his birth country, where he parachuted over the jungle and disappeared. A manhunt by the FBI and Honduran police, plus a $25,000 bounty from the airline eventually led to his surrender.
June 3, 1972: Western Airlines Flight 701 from Los Angeles to Seattle was hijacked by Willie Roger Holder, a black Vietnam veteran, and Catherine Marie Kerkow, his white girlfriend. The hijackers claimed they had a bomb in an attaché case and demanded $500,000. After allowing all 97 passengers to get off in San Francisco, they flew to Algeria where they were granted political asylum. The Algerian government confiscated and returned $488,000 of the ransom money to US officials.
June 23, 1972: In the 9th copycat D.B. Cooper-style hijacking Martin J. McNally under the pseudonym of Robert W. Wilson hijacked American Airlines Flight 119, a Boeing 727 bound from St. Louis to Tulsa and demanded $502,500. The plane flew back and forth between Tulsa and St. Louis while the loot was raised. In St. Louis, live news reports about the hijacking prompted David J. Hanley, a 30-year-old businessman, to crash his 1972 Cadillac at 80 mph through two airport fences, travel down the runway at high speed and crash into the nosegear of the plane, which was beginning to taxi. The demolished car lodged under the fuselage and one wing. Hanley suffered multiple injuries and was charged with willfully damaging a civil aircraft. The hijacker transferred to a new 727 and jumped out of the plane over Indiana. The full loot bag and gun were discovered by searchers near Peru, Indiana. Fingerprints led to McNally. While in Marion Federal Prison McNally and fellow inmate and hijacker Garrett Trapnell (see January 28, 1972 above) were involved in an attempted prison escape on May 24, 1978, after Trapnell's girlfriend hijacked a helicopter. The escape attempt ended when the helicopter pilot grabbed the woman's gun and killed her. McNally was paroled from prison January 27, 2010
July 5, 1972: Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 710 was hijacked by two Bulgarian immigrants shortly after take-off from Sacramento, California en route to San Francisco. The hijackers demanded $800,000, two parachutes and to be flown to the Soviet Union. The hijacking ended on the runway in San Francisco when agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation stormed the plane killing both hijackers and one passenger. Two other passengers were wounded. These were the first passengers killed and wounded in a skyjacking in the United States.
July 31, 1972: Delta Airlines Flight 841 was hijacked by five members of the Black Liberation Army including the elusive George Wright. The flight was originally from Detroit to Miami. The hijackers exchanged the passengers for $1 million in Miami and forced the plane to fly to Boston, then to Algeria, who returned the plane and cash but released the hijackers.
November 10, 1972: Southern Airways Flight 49, was hijacked by three men and flown to multiple locations in the United States, and one Canadian city. At one point, the hijackers threatened to fly the plane into the nuclear reactor at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, if their demands for $10 million in cash were not met. While stopped for refueling at McCoy Air Force Base, Orlando, the FBI shot out the plane's tires, prompting the hijackers to force pilot William Haas to take off. The hijacking came to an end when the plane landed on a partially foam-covered runway in Havana, Cuba, and the hijackers were captured after attempting to escape.
February 22, 1974: At Baltimore/Washington International Airport Samuel Byck shot and killed Maryland Aviation Administration Police Officer George Neal Ramsburg before storming Delta Airlines Flight 523 to Atlanta. When informed by pilots Reese (Doug) Loftin and Fred Jones they could not take off until wheel blocks were removed, he shot them both and grabbed a nearby passenger, ordering her to "fly the plane." Jones died as he was being removed from the aircraft after the event was concluded; Byck was mortally wounded when Charles Troyer, an Anne Arundel County police officer on the jetway, stormed the plane and fired four shots through the aircraft door at with a .357 Magnum revolver taken from the deceased Ramsburg. Two of the shots penetrated the thick window of the aircraft door and wounded Byck. Before the police could gain entry to the aircraft, Byck committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. Byck's motive was to hijack the aircraft and crash it into the White House, in an assassination attempt on President Richard Nixon
September 10, 1976: TWA Flight 355 was hijacked by Croatian separatists. Some passengers were allowed to deplane in Canada before the hijackers continued on to Iceland, then France, where they released the remaining passengers and surrendered to authorities. One New York police officer was killed while working on a bomb which the hijackers had planted at Grand Central Station.
March 13, 1978: United Flight 696 was hijacked by a lone American immediately after takeoff out of SFO. The aircraft landed in Oakland and the release of cabin crew and passengers was negotiated by the flight crew. The fueling was cut short by the hijacker and Flt 696 took off only partially refueled. Flight 696 landed in Denver to take on more fuel for Cuba. While waiting for the fuel, the cockpit crew jumped from the cockpit to escape the hijacker. The hijacker surrendered to the FBI within minutes of the crew's escape. No fatalities but the three cockpit crew-members suffered fractures and torn cartilage from the two-story leap.
December 21, 1978: 17-year-old Robin Oswald hijacked TWA Flight 541 flying from Louisville to Kansas City claiming she had three sticks of dynamite. The plane landed at Williamson County Regional Airport where she hoped to seek the release of Garrett Trapnell who was serving time at Marion Federal Penitentiary. Trapnell was serving time for a January 28, 1972 hijacking (see January 28, 1972 above). On May 24, 1978 her mother Barbara Ann Oswald was killed after hijacking a helicopter in an attempt to rescue Trapnell. Robin eventually surrendered at the Williamson Airport. The dynamite was revealed to be flares.
June 20, 1979: Nikola Kavaja, a Serbian nationalist and anti-communist hijacked American Airlines Flight 293. During the hijacking, Kavaja demanded and received another airplane with the intent of crashing it into the headquarters of the Yugoslav Communist Party. His lawyer convinced him to surrender after landing at Shannon Airport, Ireland.
