D.B. Cooper: The Hijacker Who Jumped into the Night and Never Landed
On the afternoon of 24 November 1971, the day before Thanksgiving, a quiet man in a dark suit and black tie bought a ticket under the name Dan Cooper and boarded Northwest Orient Flight 305 from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle. Shortly after takeoff he handed a note to a flight attendant. It said, in essence, that his briefcase held a bomb. When she sat beside him, he opened the case just enough to show wires, red sticks and a battery.
His demands were precise: $200,000 in twenty-dollar bills and four parachutes, to be delivered in Seattle. While the plane circled, authorities gathered the money and photographed the bills to record their serial numbers. On the ground, Cooper released all 36 passengers in exchange for the ransom, kept several crew members aboard, and ordered the Boeing 727 refueled for a flight toward Mexico City — flown low and slow, with the landing gear down, flaps at fifteen degrees, and the rear airstair unlocked.
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