HIJACKING, AIRPLANE

HIJACKING, AIRPLANE. Often known as skyjacking, airplane hijacking is a form of air piracy usually perpetrated against commercial aviation. It can range from acts of individuals motivated by personal reasons—such as escaping the political, social, or economic conditions of their homeland—to violent acts of political extortion committed by highly organized terrorist groups or criminal organizations. A distinction is usually drawn between hijacking, involving an unauthorized person or group of people seizing control of an aircraft, and other acts of airplane-related terrorism such as bombing. The ability of airplanes to traverse oceans and national borders, along with the public's marked increase in reliance on air travel, has led many terrorist organizations to choose airplane hijacking as a means for publicity or extortion. This has confronted governments with a truly global security problem as authorities struggle to keep pace with the ingenuity and brazenness of terrorist groups.

By the turn of the twenty-first century, over one thousand hijackings of commercial airplanes had been reported worldwide. The first reported act of airplane hijacking was committed on 21 February 1931 in Peru. The first reported hijacking of a U.S. airplane occurred on 1 May 1961, when a hijacker forced a domestic flight to detour to Cuba. Hijackings were relatively rare, however, until the period between 1967 and 1972, when they reached epidemic proportions, peaking in an eleven-day period in early September 1970, when six hijackings were reported worldwide among the eighty for the year. Although hijacking during this period was chiefly identified first with Cuba and then the Middle East, U.S. domestic aviation was not immune. One notable incident occurred on 24 November 1971, when a mysterious figure known as "D. B. Cooper" parachuted out of a plane after having extorted $200,000 from the airline. Despite a massive manhunt he was never found, although would-be emulators proved decidedly less successful.

In response to the rash of hijackings, new security measures were implemented by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the airlines, and various government law enforcement agencies. These included searches of passengers and their luggage prior to boarding and a "sky marshals" program involving armed law enforcement officers aboard some flights. In 1973 metal detection and X-ray devices became mandatory at all airports. Although the new security measures led to longer check-in times and some passenger inconvenience, they also led to a dramatic reduction in the number of U.S. hijackings.

By the 1990s, however, death tolls worldwide were rising. The hijacking of a domestic Chinese flight on 2 October 1990 resulted in 132 deaths. On 23 November 1996, a hijacked Ethiopian flight resulted in 123 deaths. But by far the worst case of airplane hijacking occurred on 11 September 2001. It was the first hijacking in the United States in a decade and the first one with fatalities since 1987. In a coordinated attack, four U.S. domestic flights were hijacked and, without warning or demands, two planes were deliberately crashed into the two World Trade Center towers in New York City and another into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania. The 266 passengers and crew in the planes died instantly, nearly 200 people at the Pentagon were killed, and some 3,000 people in the World Trade Center towers perished when the buildings collapsed.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arey, James A. The Sky Pirates. New York: Scribners, 1972.

Criminal Acts against Civil Aviation. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration, Office of Civil Aviation Security, 1986–.

David G.Coleman

See alsoTerrorism .