Aircraft Hijacking - History

History

The first recorded aircraft hijack took place on February 21, 1931, in Arequipa, Peru. Byron Rickards, flying a Ford Tri-Motor, was approached on the ground by armed revolutionaries. He refused to fly them anywhere and after a 10-day standoff Rickards was informed that the revolution was successful and he could go in return for giving one group member a lift to Lima.

In the Fort Worth Star-Telegram daily newspaper (morning edition) 19 September 1970, J. Howard "Doc" DeCelles states that he was actually the victim of the first skyjacking in December 1929. He was flying a postal route for the Mexican company Transportes Aeras Transcontinentales, ferrying mail from San Luis Potosí to Toreon and then on to Guadalajara. "Doc" was approached by Gen. Saturnino Cedillo, governor of the state of San Luis Potosí and one of the last remaining lieutenants of Pancho Villa. Cedillo was accompanied by several other men. He was told through an interpreter he had no choice in the matter. "Doc" stalled long enough to convey the information to his boss, who told him to cooperate. He had no maps, but was guided by the men as he flew above Mexican mountains. He landed on a road as directed, and was held captive for several hours under armed guard. He eventually was released with a "Buenos" from Cedillo and his staff. DeCelles kept his flight log, according to the article, but he did not file a report with authorities. "Doc" went on to work for the FAA in Fort Worth after his flying career.

The world's first fatal hijacking occurred on 28 October 1939. Earnest P. “Larry” Pletch shot Carl Bivens, 39, a flight instructor who was offering Pletch lessons in a yellow Taylor Cub monoplane with tandem controls in the air after taking off in Brookfield, Missouri. Bivens, instructing from the front seat, was shot in the back of the head twice. “Carl was telling me I had a natural ability and I should follow that line,” Pletch later confessed to prosecutors in Missouri. "I had a revolver in my pocket and without saying a word to him, I took it out of my overalls and I fired a bullet into the back of his head. He never knew what struck him." The Chicago Daily Tribune called it “One of the most spectacular crimes of the 20th century, and what is believed to be the first airplane kidnap murder on record.” Because it occurred somewhere over three Missouri counties, and involved interstate transport of a stolen airplane, it raised questions in legal circles about where, by whom, and even whether he could be prosecuted. Ernest Pletch pled guilty and was sentenced to life in prison, where he died in June 2001.

Between 1948 and 1957, there were 15 hijackings worldwide, an average of a little more than one per year. Between 1958 and 1967, this climbed to 48, or about five per year. The number dropped to 38 in 1968, but grew to 82 in 1969, the largest number in a single year in the history of civil aviation; in January 1969 alone, eight airliners were hijacked to Cuba. Between 1968 and 1977, the annual average jumped to 41.

In 1973, the Nixon Administration ordered the discontinuance by the CIA of the use of hijacking as a covert action weapon against the Castro regime. Cuban intelligence followed suit. That year, the two countries reached an agreement for the prosecution or return of the hijackers and the aircraft to each other's country. The Taiwanese intelligence also followed the CIA's example-vis-а-vis China.

These measures plus the improvement in Israel's relations with Egypt and Jordan, the renunciation of terrorism by the Palestine Liberation Organization, the on-going peace talks between the PLO and Israel, the collapse of the communist states in East Europe, which reduced the scope for sanctuaries for terrorists, and the more cautious attitude of countries such as Libya and Syria after the U.S. declared them State-sponsors of international terrorism, the collapse of ideological terrorist groups such as the Red Army Faction and the tightening of civil aviation security measures by all countries have arrested and reversed the steep upward movement of hijackings.

However, the situation has not returned to the pre-1968 level and the number of successful hijackings continues to be high - an average of 18 per annum during the 10-year period between 1988 and 1997, as against the pre-1968 average of five.

In the Dymshits–Kuznetsov hijacking affair on 15 June 1970, a group of Soviet refuseniks attempted to hijack a civilian aircraft in order to escape to the West, were caught and spent many years in Soviet prisons. This case is politically distinct in the sense that the government of Israel - which strongly denounced other cases of Aircraft hijacking - endorsed this one and declared its participants to be heroes and martyrs for the Zionist cause. This was denounced as a double standard by left-wing critics such as then Knesset Member Charlie Biton.

On September 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda Islamic extremists hijacked American Airlines Flight 11, United Airlines Flight 175, American Airlines Flight 77, and United Airlines Flight 93 and crashed them into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, the southwestern side of the Pentagon building, and Stonycreek Township near Shanksville, Pennsylvania in a terrorist attack. The 2,996 death toll makes the hijackings the most fatal in history.