Over half a century ago, DB Cooper managed to pull off one of the coolest hijackings ever. Or, that is what everyone assumed.
On November 24 1971, Dan Cooper boarded a Northwest Airlines, flight 305 from Portland, Oregon in the US to Seattle along with 35 others and six crew members. According to eyewitnesses, Cooper was in his mid-40s, had dark hair and wore a dark overcoat, black suit, white shirt and sunglasses. The FBI’s “Wanted,” poster said he also carried a dark briefcase and a paper bag.
Once the flight took off, he handed a note to a flight attendant that said that he had a bomb tucked inside his briefcase and asked her to write down his demands, which included four parachutes and $200,000 in $20 bills to be handed over to him once the aircraft lands at Seattle.
The authorities complied with his demand and handed over the cash and parachutes to him. Cooper, in turn, allowed all the passengers and two of the six crew members to deboard. The flight took off again after refuelling at the Seattle airport. Cooper then instructed the pilot to fly under 10,000 feet with the flaps at 15 degrees. Once the plane was near south-west Washington, the hijacker jumped out of the plane with the bag of money tied around his waist.
The FBI, volunteers and a bunch of treasure hunters kept searching for Cooper, but he was never found. The search was called off nearly 45 years later. On February 10, 1980, a young boy named Brian Ingram found a weather-beaten pack of $5,800 in $20 notes on a sandbar along the Columbia River near Vancouver, Washington. The notes matched the serial numbers of the money handed over to Cooper. But disputes arose over who should own the bills. They were finally divided between Ingram and Northwest Orient’s insurer, while the FBI retained 14 examples as evidence. Ingram, however, made some money out of the hijacker’s ransom by auctioning them in 2008 for about $37,000.
According to various sources, the hijacking apparently remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in commercial aviation history. (Source: thepointsguy.com; Associated Press).