August 2nd 1970
50 years ago today was the first ever hijacking of a 747.
The plane took off a little after 1:00 a.m. from JFK and less than 2 hours later the 27 year old hijacker pulled out a gun and demanded to be flown to Cuba. When Fidel Castro heard that a jumbo airliner was coming to Cuba for the first time he jumped out of bed and rushed to the airport to greet it.
When the plane landed the pilot and hijacker were the only ones to disembark (many of the passengers slept through the entire ordeal). The tallest ladder truck in the airport was three feet too short for the plane and they had to climb down. The airport didn’t have the proper equipment to open the luggage compartment so the hijacker couldn’t retrieve luggage. The airport also didn’t have the proper equipment to start a 747 engine so the pilot had to leave one of them on the entire time.
Mr. Castro asked the pilot to give him a tour of the outside of the plane and the pilot also answered all his questions about the capabilities of the plane, including whether the runway there was long enough for the plane to take off- it was. (He declined the offer of a tour inside the cabin.) He then allowed the plane to leave and had the hijacker arrested.
After his release three years later he committed another crime shortly afterwards (I couldn’t find anywhere what he did) and went back to jail. When he got released for the second time he had enough in Cuba and returned to the US where he got sentenced to life in jail. (I tried researching his current whereabouts but couldn’t find anything definitive. The last news article I found said that he was still in jail but that was over 10 years ago. I checked the BOP inmate locator and couldn’t find anyone with his name currently incarcerated but there was someone with the same name released in 2011.)
The hijacked aircraft, registration number N736PA, was the first 747 in commercial service only a few months earlier, on January 22, 1970. On March 27,1977 this very same airliner was crashed into by another 747 on the runway on the Spanish island of Tenerife. Between the two planes there were 583 fatalities (and 61 injuries), it remains the deadliest aviation accident to this day.
Of the 1,588 747s built 61 were written off as hull loses. Of the 25 in the original Pan Am order that launched the entire program 4 (that I know of) suffered that fate, although none to design flaws or mechanical failure.
Aside from the one listed above, Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed in a bombing in 1988, Pan Am Flight 73 was destroyed after crashing into something during takeoff in 1983 and Pan Am Flight 93 which was hijacked as part of the Dawson Field hijackings and blown up in Cairo after all the passengers left.
I found it interesting that the two hijackers were originally on an El Al flight intending to hijack it with two other terrorists but the pilot kicked them off and they got on the Pan Am flight and hijacked that one instead. The El Al flight was almost hijacked but the pilot put the plane into a steep dive, forcing the hijackers to the ceiling and giving the sky marshal the opportunity to neutralize the situation.