Tuesday's hijacking of an Egyptair aircraft on a domestic flight from Alexandria to Cairo took the world by surprise in part because, particularly since the September 11th attacks in the United States in , security on passenger flights around the world has been substantially increased. The s and s saw a large number of hijackings carried out by Palestinian terrorist groups. El Al Israel Airlines quickly developed a reputation for its stringent airline safety.
The first and last successful hijacking of an El Al aircraft took place in Originally scheduled to depart Rome on the afternoon of July 22, engine problems delayed the flight's departure and in the end, there were only 38 passengers on board — seven of them El Al employees or their family members — in addition to a crew of Shortly after takeoff, two of the three hijackers burst into the cockpit with guns.
The hijackers were members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which had been founded in by George Habash. The plane landed in Algiers, Algeria, where the aircraft and its passengers became captives of Algerian officials, starting a more than month-long ordeal for many of the passengers and crew.
The 23 non-Israeli passengers were released first. On July 27, the 10 remaining women, passengers, crew, as well as three children, were set free. But the remaining 12 Israeli men seven crew and five passengers, two of them airline employees remained prisoners of the Algerian government until September 1, more than 40 days later. They were released following an international aviation boycott of Algeria and the release by Israel of 16 Palestinian prisoners.
One set of hijackings that captured particular attention around the world was the plot by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to commandeer five planes, four bound for New York and one for London. On September 6, the hijackers, who demanded the release of Palestinians in Israeli jails, managed to take control of three planes and force them to land at Dawson's Field, a remote former British airstrip in Jordan. A fourth plane, a Pan Am aircraft, was flown to Cairo and blown up after the passengers disembarked.
The two hijackers, a Nicaraguan American man and a Palestinian woman, Leila Khaled, attempted to take over the plane after it took off from Amsterdam.
The El Al pilot refused to accede to the demands of the hijackers. The male hijacker was shot by an onboard sky marshal and later died of his injuries while Khaled was overpowered.
The plane landed at Heathrow airport in London. Norman Shanks, a former director of airport security at Heathrow, told the New York Times that following the coordinated series of hijackings, the international aviation community took action to prevent hijackings. The hijackers reportedly separated Jewish from non-Jewish passengers, and when the aircraft landed demanded the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel or the plane would be blown up.
The following day, a commando team from the IDF's elite Sayeret Matkal unit approached the aircraft disguised as aviation technicians. I think that they eventually put in those regulations when it became obvious that planes could be used as weapons of mass destruction. Hijacking victim: 'I realized it's not a drill' And that was really the straw that broke the camel's back. It became obvious that if that had happened there would have been a tremendous loss of life and destruction.
So it wasn't just a matter of, "Well, let's give in to people and everyone will be safe. CNN: Your book describes the tipping point in the history of aviation travel where travelers have gone from being treated as welcome guests to -- for some -- feeling like they're being treated as potential criminals.
Koerner: That's exactly right. It's interesting that the fear of the airlines was that people would not fly anymore or they would lose a large percentage of their customer base. People would choose to drive instead of fly because they didn't want to put up with this intrusion.
But interestingly, when the dawn of the screening was covered in early , pretty much universally people were in favor of it, because they recognized how dangerous the skyjacking epidemic had become. Shooting on a plane at 35, feet isn't good I talk in the book a little bit about these reporters swarming these airports on the day they launched universal screening and hoping they would catch some kind of conflict or disgruntled fliers.
But pretty much to a man and to a woman, people welcomed the new security because they recognized -- especially in light of what had happened in with all the craziness -- that this was a necessary step. CNN: Can you share some personal details about your research process and maybe some unique experiences or surprises you ran into along the way?
Koerner: One thing that's interesting for me is, I travel a lot as a journalist, but I've never really paid much attention to airline personnel on the planes and the lives of pilots and flight attendants. And that really became something I became very deeply immersed in. With this project I was trying to track down flight attendants and pilots who had been on this hijacked flight which is the focus of the book -- Western Airlines Flight I traveled all over the country talking to people who'd been on the flight to get their recollections of it.
Most interestingly, I actually tracked down one of the hijackers. He was living in San Diego. And I found him and it took me a while -- he was difficult to find. I couldn't get a phone number. I eventually just got an address for him through a series of happy accidents.
I sent him a letter and a copy of my first book and he was kind enough to respond. And that was a tremendous experience and a tremendous boost for the book, to get his recollections and memories and details that only he had. Koerner: Yes, it is. CNN: Based on what you knew about the hijacking and based on the man you met -- how do you think he has changed?
Koerner: You have to keep in mind that he did this act when he was quite young. He was 22 years old when he hijacked this plane, and he'd served four tours in Vietnam. I think the combination of youth and the difficulties associated with his military service and maybe some other factors -- maybe some psychological factors -- made him an angry person.
And he lashed out. He acted out in a pretty extreme, spectacular kind of way with this hijacking. I think age and experience changes everybody. And the man I met was a very thoughtful, very calm, incredibly charismatic person. It was really a joy to sit down with him. At the same time I could see him struggling to come to terms with what he'd done and what his role in history was. For him, he had pretty fond memories of a lot of aspects of this.
Not so much causing people terror or consternation -- but the experience that came afterwards with his travels and being in the public spotlight was something that weighed heavily on him and he thought about quite a bit. Koerner: That's the million dollar question in the book. I don't want to give too much away, but certainly the last time that she connected with Roger, she said she was going to Switzerland for a brief trip with friends.
Based on information I have, I believe she tried to carve out a new identity -- that she decided that this was her chance to gain a new life. They were waiting around to be put on trial in France for hijacking and she didn't know how that was going to turn out.
Her relationship with Roger had come to an end -- at least romantically. And I felt that she sensed that this was her opportunity to move beyond all this -- to move beyond the folly of her youth. CNN: When you were writing the book were you sensitive to glorifying the anti-hero aspect of Holder's and Krekow's story? I've seen them compared to the notorious s bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde.
Koerner: I think you need to approach these kinds of stories with empathy for everyone involved. At the same time you do have to be judgmental to some extent and recognize that their actions caused a lot of people a lot of pain. And I know for a fact that they're aware of that.
It's a deeply human story, and all humans have their pluses and minuses, so I think that should come through in all the characters in this book. During your research did you reach out to Davis? Koerner: I didn't, because from what I understand she doesn't like talking about the past, and she never met any of these characters. I did reach out to some other people who wouldn't go on the record with me, for example Black Panther Party leader Eldridge Cleaver's widow Kathleen Cleaver, who I know was an eyewitness to these events.
And how and why did Cuba set itself apart during all of this? Koerner: A lot of people were hijacking planes to Cuba in the '60s. A lot of hijackers, I think, thought they would be greeted as heroes when they arrived in Havana. But it was actually quite the opposite. Fidel Castro had no patience for these crazy Americans coming with planes with their various motives.
So as an American you basically faced one of two fates when you went to Havana with a stolen plane. One, you would be put in a South Havana dormitory called Hijacker House, where you were given about 16 square feet of living space with a cot, and they give you 40 pesos a month, and you kind of have to fend for yourself.
It was a really awful life. And if the government really didn't like you -- for example, if you were violent on board the plane or if you robbed any of the passengers -- they would actually send you to these gulags in the south of the country where you would harvest sugar cane. And the conditions there were just absolutely nightmarish.
There was a hijacker named Anthony Bryant who wrote a memoir after spending about 11 and a half years in prison in Cuba for taking a plane. The details he has in that book are just really shocking about the treatment of prisoners there. Koerner: Well, you certainly would, because there are still some hijackers living there. Most came back, but there actually are still a few who decided stay there.
Some of them make their living as tour guides, or translators or fixers for journalists. There are still people there who went there in the '60s or '70s and never came back. CNN: Who was Capt. Eugene Vaughn? On the way to Southeast Asia, one of Vaughn's passengers was a South Vietnamese native who had just graduated from the University of Washington and was on the way home.
He decided to hijack the plane and take it to Hanoi to protest the bombing of North Vietnam. They land in Saigon and the captain went back and basically tackled this hijacker. Another of the passengers was an ex-cop from San Francisco.
Vaughn knew the ex-cop was armed and Vaughn had him shoot the hijacker to death. The captain then literally picked up this hijacker and took his body to the rear exit of the plane and threw the corpse onto the tarmac. He said he did it because he was so offended that this guy, who would challenge his command, would remain on his plane -- even while dead.
He just had to get him off the plane. When he returned back to the US, a lot of people hailed Vaughn as a hero, because this was a moment in America during the skyjacking epidemic when the public was really through with it. They were really finished. It was no longer quaint or funny when people were hijacked. There were actually deaths involved and there was a lot of terror going on.
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