It’s hard to imagine in these days of TSA security, but over a five-year period starting in 1968, hijackers seized commercial jets nearly once a week. Brendan I. Koerner captures this piece of history in The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking.
Mr. Koerner uses the hijacking of Western Airlines Flight 701 on June 2, 1972 as the centerpiece of his book, with other tales of hijackings wrapped around it. Roger Holder and Cathy Kerkow captured Flight 701 with a fake bomb. Neither had to pass through a metal detector or any security screening before boarding the plane.
Since Sept. 11 we have no sympathy for skyjackers. Mr. Koerner’s book returns us to the time of free love, the black panthers, and Vietnam War protests. In this golden age of of skyjacking you could walk through an airport “without encountering a single inconvenience — no X-ray machines, no metal detectors, no uniformed security personnel with grabby hands and bitter dispositions.”
Even as skyjackings became a weekly occurrence, the airline industry still opposed security screenings because of the inconvenience.
Unlike today’s fears of skyjackers being terrorists, the golden age skyjackers were more interested in fame, money and expressing displeasure with the government. A favorite destination was warm weather communist Cuba. Few actually wanted to harm anyone. The airline industry was convinced that enuring periodic skyjackings was better financially than paying for invasive security measures at hundreds of airports.
Screening baggage with metal detectors at airports did not become mandatory until 1973. The airlines and their lobbyists fought security requirements. They thought costs would be prohibitive, and that passengers would rebel. Civil libertarians fought screening as a Constitutional violation. (For a touch of cynicism, the automobile industry supported the screening requirements.)
Of course in this golden age, flying was much more enjoyable. “Decades have passed since coach-class passengers enjoyed luxuries that have since become inconceivable: lumps of Alaskan crabmeat served atop monogrammed china, generous pours of free liquor, leggy stewardesses who performed their duties with geisha-like courtesy.” I suppose it’s easier to tolerate a detour to Havana when you have room to stretch your legs, are well-fed and liquored-up.
It was the November 10, 1972 skyjacking of Southern Airlines Flight 49 that finally caused the government to implement mandatory screening, the airlines to concede, and passengers to accept security. Those skyjackers threatened to use the skyjacked plane as a weapon and crash it into the nuclear facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
The golden age ended when skyjacking turned into a weapon.