D.B. Cooper, the Changing Nature of Hijackings and the Foundation for Today’s Airport Security

That changed in 1968. On July 23 of that year, members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked an El Al flight from Rome to Tel Aviv. Though that 39-day ordeal ended without any loss of life, it ushered in a new era of more violent – often politically motivated – hijackings of international airlines.

From 1968 to 1974, U.S. airlines experienced 130 hijackings. Many fell into this new category of politically motivated hijackings, including what has become known as the Dawson’s Field hijackings. In September 1970, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked four aircraft, including three belonging to U.S. carriers, and forced them to land at Dawson’s Field in Libya. No hostage lives were lost, but the hijackers used explosives to destroy all four aircraft.

Additionally, and more worrying to U.S. officials, two different groups of hijackers, one in 1971 and another in 1972, threatened to crash planes into nuclear power plants.

Cooper Inspires Copycats
Amid this dramatic rise in the number of hijackings, on Nov. 24, 1971, a man known to the American public as D.B. Cooper boarded a Northwest Orient 727 flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle. Shortly after takeoff, he showed a stewardess the contents of his briefcase, which he said was a bomb. He then instructed the stewardess to take a note to the cockpit. In it, he demanded US$200,000 in $20 bills and four parachutes.

Upon arrival in Seattle, Cooper allowed the other passengers to deplane in exchange for the money and the parachutes. Cooper then ordered the pilot to fly to Mexico but low and slowly – no higher than 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) and under 200 knots (230 mph, 370 kph). Somewhere between Seattle and a fuel stop in Reno, Nevada, Cooper and the loot disappeared out the back of the aircraft via the 727’s aft stairwell. No one knows for sure what happened to him, though some of the money was recovered in 1980.

Cooper wasn’t the first person to hijack an American airliner and demand money. That dubious honor belongs to Arthur Barkley. Frustrated with his inability to get government officials to take seriously his dispute with the IRS, on June 4, 1970, Barkley hijacked a TWA aircraft, demanding $100 million and a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court. Barkley’s efforts failed, and he ended up confined to a mental institution.

The idea that Cooper might have succeeded, however, clearly inspired several imitators. While it remains uncertain whether Cooper lived to enjoy the fruits of his escapade, none of his imitators did. They included Richard McCoy, Jr., Martin J. McNally and Frederick Hahneman, all of whom successfully parachuted out of the aircraft once they received their ransom payments, only to be eventually caught and punished.

Tightening the Screws
In response to the spate of more violent and costly hijackings, the U.S. government established the first anti-hijacking security protocols. Most of them aimed to prevent hijackers from getting on aircraft in the first place. The measures included a hijacker profile, metal detectors and X-ray machines. Specific to Cooper, airlines retrofitted aircraft with a devise known as a Cooper vane that made it impossible to open aft stairwells during flight.

The protocols put in place in the 1970s also laid the foundation for the expansive security measures taken after 9/11. A series of court cases upheld the constitutionality of these early measures. For example, United States v. Lopez, decided in 1971, upheld the use of the hijacker profile.

More importantly, in United States v. Epperson, a federal court ruled in 1972 that the government’s interest in preventing hijackings justified the requirement for passengers to pass through a magnetometer at the airport. And in 1973, the Ninth Circuit Court, in United States v. Davis, declared that the government’s need to protect passengers from hijackings rendered all searches of passengers for weapons and explosives as reasonable and legal.

These rulings upholding early anti-hijacking measures helped create the strong legal grounds for the rapid adoption of the more rigorous security protocols – including detailed identification checks, random pat-downs and full body scans – adopted after 9/11.

The mystery surrounding the fate of Cooper may have afforded him an outsized place in American popular culture, but his crime should also be remembered as one in a consequential wave of hijackings that finally forced the U.S. government, airline executives and airport officials to adopt the first versions of the security measures travelers take for granted today.

Janet Bednarek is Professor of History, University of Dayton. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation.