Aircraft hijacking Timeline of Events

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Aircraft hijacking

Aircraft hijacking is the unlawful seizure of an aircraft by an individual or a group. In most cases, the pilot is forced to fly according to the orders of the hijackers. Occasionally, however, the hijackers have flown the aircraft themselves, such as the September 11 attacks of 2001...

Timeline of Events

1948

7.16.1948

The storming of the cockpit of the Miss Macao passenger seaplane, operated by a subsidiary of the Cathay Pacific Airways, marks the first aircraft hijacking of a commercial plane.

1970

3.31.1970

Nine terrorists from the Japanese Red Army hijack Japan Airlines Flight 351 at Tokyo International Airport, wielding samurai swords and carrying a bomb.

1971

11.24.1971

During a severe thunderstorm over Washington state, a hijacker calling himself Dan Cooper (AKA D. B. Cooper) parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines plane with $200,000 in ransom money. He has never been found.

1972

11.10.1972

Southern Airways Flight 49 from Birmingham, Alabama is hijacked and, at one point, is threatened with crashing into the nuclear installation at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After two days, the plane lands in Havana, Cuba, where the hijackers are jailed by Fidel Castro.

1977

10.17.1977

German Autumn: Four days after it is hijacked, Lufthansa Flight 181 lands in Mogadishu, Somalia, where a team of German GSG 9 commandos later rescues all remaining hostages on board.

10.18.1977

German Autumn: a set of events revolving around the kidnapping of Hanns-Martin Schleyer and the hijacking of a Lufthansa flight by the Red Army Faction (RAF) comes to an end when Schleyer is murdered and various RAF members allegedly commit suicide.

1984

12.4.1984

Hezbollah militants hijack a Kuwait Airlines plane, killing four passengers.

1985

11.23.1985

Gunmen hijack EgyptAir Flight 648 while en route from Athens to Cairo. When the plane lands in Malta, Egyptian commandos storm the hijacked jetliner, but 60 people die in the raid.

1986

9.5.1986

Pan Am Flight 73 with 358 people on board is hijacked at Karachi International Airport.

1994

4.7.1994

Auburn Calloway attempts to hijack FedEx Flight 705 and crash it to insure his family with his life insurance policy. The crew subdues him and lands the aircraft safely.

1999

7.23.1999

ANA Flight 61 is hijacked in Tokyo, Japan.

12.31.1999

Five hijackers, who had been holding 155 hostages on an Indian Airlines plane, leave the plane with two Islamic clerics that they had demanded be freed.

2001

9.11.2001

The September 11 attacks take place in the United States. Airplane hijackings result in the collapse of the World Trade Center in New York City, damage to The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and the crashing of a passenger airliner in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.