Today is the anniversary of the hijacking of Northwest Orient flight 305. In 1971 a man called D. B. Cooper claimed he had a bomb and demanded $200,000 and two black parachutes with reserve chutes. He lowered the rear stairway of the 727 and jumped out somewhere over southern Washington and disappeared without a trace. Some of the money turned up in 1980 but the case is still opened and unsolved. The incident is memorable to me for a couple of reasons. First, anything to do with jumping out of airplanes was of interest. I had just graduated from U.S. Navy jump school the previous june and was an active jumper stationed in Naha, Okinawa at the time. When this happened it was a major topic of conversation around the parachute loft. After all, jumping out of a jet was not something the average skydiver experienced.
The second thing that makes the incident so memorable is the impact it had on air travel in the United States. Hijacking was not something that happened in the U.S. There had only been one prior to this and that was a cuban militant in 1958. Hijackings were not uncommon in Europe where people used it as a means to escape the Soviet Union but the U.S. was relatively immune to that sort of thing. Then along came D.B. Cooper.
After Cooper's hijacking the airlines began putting metal detectors in all the airports and air travel would never be the same. Prior to November 1971 air travel was almost as easy is riding a bus. Buy a ticket, go to the gate and board the plane. Guns? Not a problem. My handgun was usually in my carry on bag and the stewardess would store long guns in the closet with all the suit bags for you. No one ever gave them a second thought.
