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→In popular culture: included Dark Knight Rises in pop culture use of airplane hijackings Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit |
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===Record-setting hijackings===
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* 1931: The first recorded aircraft hijack took place on February 21, 1931, in [[Arequipa]], [[Peru]]. Byron Richards, flying a [[Ford Tri-Motor]], was approached on the ground by armed revolutionaries. He refused to fly them anywhere and after a 10-day standoff, Richards was informed that the revolution was successful and he could go in return for flying one group member to [[Lima]].<ref>30 years later Richards was again the victim of a failed hijacking attempt. A father and son boarded his [[Continental Airlines]] [[Boeing 707]] in [[El Paso, Texas]] and tried to force him at gunpoint to fly the plane to [[Cuba]] hoping for a cash reward from [[Fidel Castro]]. [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] agents and police chased the plane down the runway and shot out its tires, averting the hijacking. See [http://www.airdisaster.com/features/hijack/hijack.shtml http://www.airdisaster.com/features/hijack/hijack.shtml]</ref>
* 25 September 1932: a [[Sikorsky S-38]] registration P-BDAD still bearing the titles of Nyrba do Brasil was seized in the company's hangar by three men, who took a fourth as one hostage. None were aviators but they managed to take off. However, the aircraft crashed in [[São João de Meriti]], killing the four men. Apparently, the hijack was related to the events of the [[Constitutionalist Revolution]] in São Paulo and it is considered to be the first hijack that took place in Brazil.
* 1939: The world's first fatal hijacking occurred on 28 October 1939. Earnest P. "Larry" Pletch shot Carl Bivens, 39, a flight instructor who was offering Pletch lessons in a yellow Taylor Cub monoplane with tandem controls in the air after taking off in Brookfield, Missouri. Bivens, instructing from the front seat, was shot in the back of the head twice. "Carl was telling me I had a natural ability and I should follow that line," Pletch later confessed to prosecutors in Missouri. "I had a revolver in my pocket and without saying a word to him, I took it out of my overalls and I fired a bullet into the back of his head. He never knew what struck him." The ''[[Chicago Daily Tribune]]'' called it "One of the most spectacular crimes of the 20th century, and what is believed to be the first airplane kidnap murder on record." Because it occurred somewhere over three Missouri counties, and involved interstate transport of a stolen airplane, it raised questions in legal circles about where, by whom, and even whether he could be prosecuted. Ernest Pletch pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. However, his sentence was commuted (probably due to [[prison overcrowding]]), and he was released on 1 March 1957, after serving 17 years. He died in Eldredge, Missouri, in June 2001.<ref>[http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/murderous-story-americas-first-hijacking-180956152/ "The Murderous Story of America's First Hijacking"], Mike Dash, smithsonian.com (5 August 2015)</ref><ref>http://www.magbloom.com/PDF/bloom20/Bloom_20_Killer.pdf</ref>
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Most hijackings will involve the plane landing at a certain destination, followed by the hijackers making negotiable demands. [[Aviator|Pilot]]s and [[flight attendant]]s are still trained to adopt the "Common Strategy" tactic, which was approved by the United States [[Federal Aviation Administration|FAA]]. It teaches crew members to comply with the hijackers' demands, get the plane to land safely and then let the security forces handle the situation. Crew members should advise passengers to sit quietly in order to increase their chances of survival. They were also trained not to make any heroic moves that could endanger themselves or other people. The FAA realized that the longer a hijacking persisted, the more likely it would end peacefully with the hijackers reaching their goal;<ref>{{cite web|url=http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch3.htm|title=National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States|publisher=}}</ref> often, during the epidemic of skyjackings in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the end result was an inconvenient but otherwise harmless trip to Cuba for the passengers.
Later examples of active passenger and crew member resistance occurred when passengers and flight attendants of [[2001 failed shoe bomb attempt|American Airlines Flight 63]] from [[Paris]] to [[Miami, Florida|Miami]] on December 22, 2001, teamed up to help prevent [[Richard Reid (shoe bomber)|Richard Reid]] from igniting explosives hidden in his shoes. Another example is when a few passengers and flight attendants teamed up to subdue [[Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab]] who attempted to detonate explosives sewn into his underwear aboard [[Northwest Flight 253]] on December 25, 2009. Flight attendants and pilots now receive extensive anti-hijacking and self-defense training designed to thwart a hijacking or bombing.<ref>
In 2012, six hijackers hijacked [[Tianjin Airlines Flight 7554|Tianjin Airlines flight 7554]]. Two of the hijackers died from severe injuries sustained during a fight with passengers and crew who attempted to subdue them. A doctor led elderly and children away from the violence. The hijackers had weapons which they used to attack cabin crew and passengers.
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