Author Topic: ‘You don’t understand, Captain. He has a gun’: The hijacking of Flight 1320 - The Boston Globe  (Read 822 times)

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Offline TomSea

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Intro,  if the paywall shows up, one can read this story on Firefox but one has to press the read (page icon in the URL box) version. It's pretty interesting though, it is a long read, maybe one for those with some extra time at home. It's a pretty exciting read, we use to have "adventure" types of magazines, that have some exciting story,  well, this is actually kind of like that.  The year is about 1969, 1970.

Excerpted:

Quote
‘You don’t understand, Captain. He has a gun’: The hijacking of Flight 1320 - The Boston Globe

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Inside the skyjacking that changed how the world flies


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When he glanced to the left, though, he spotted something bizarre. Sandy, the stewardess, was walking toward the cockpit, trailed closely by a young, thin guy with thick sideburns and shaggy brown hair. Even though the cabin was dimly lit, he was wearing dark sunglasses, as well as a ragged suede coat. To Lloyd, he looked like just another hippie — they were everywhere these days. If Lloyd had to be on a plane, he longed for the time when everyone dressed in their Sunday best.

Nothing about this seemed right. The hippie walked with his arms awkwardly folded, as if hiding something. And he was heading to the cockpit when the fasten seat belts light was on and the plane was close to landing.

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Al agreed it made no sense. He wondered if the hippie might be a hijacker. More than 50 US flights had been hijacked in the previous two years — in 1969 alone, Eastern Airlines had been targeted 10 times. Yet all those so-called skyjackings had ended peacefully, with no fatalities. The hijackers would typically demand money and command the pilot to fly to Fidel Castro’s Cuba, where they hoped to find asylum. Skyjackings were so common that the airlines seemed to treat them as little more than a nuisance. Even passengers didn’t seem too put out. In exchange for the inconvenience, they would typically get bottomless drinks and a story of adventure they could tell for the rest of their days.

Full story at: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/03/20/magazine/you-dont-understand-captain-he-has-gun-hijacking-flight-1320//?s_campaign=breakingnews:newsletter