D. B. Cooper

D. B. Cooper (alias) was a famous airplane hijacker.

At 16:35 on Thanksgiving Eve, November 24, 1971 in the United States, a man travelling under the name Dan Cooper hijacked a Northwest Orient Airlines Boeing 727-051, flight 305, flying from Portland International Airport (PDX) in Portland, Oregon, with the threat of a bomb (he had a briefcase containing wires and "red sticks"). He was dressed entirely in black and wearing sunglasses.

When the plane landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport near Seattle, Washington at 17:45, its intended destination, he released the passengers in exchange for $200,000 and four parachutes. At 19:45 he then had the air crew take the plane back into the air, ordering them to fly towards Mexico at low speed and altitude with the landing gear down and 15 degrees of flap. At some point during the journey he jumped out of the rear stairway of the airplane with the money and parachutes. The FBI believed his descent was at 20:11 over southwest Washington, because the rear stairway "bumped" at that time. His descent went unnoticed by the United States Air Force F-106 jet fighters tracking the airliner.

Despite an eighteen-day search of the projected landing zone no trace of the man was found, and it is unknown whether he survived the escape. In February 1980, $5,800 (in bundles of $20 bills) of the ransom money was found near Vancouver, Washington on the bank of the Columbia River.

The FBI questioned and then released a man by the name of Daniel B. Cooper, who was never considered a significant suspect. Due to a miscommunication with the media, however, the initials "D. B." became firmly associated with the hijacker and this is how he is now known.

The image shown is a 1981 FBI composite drawing of D. B. Cooper.

Following three similar (but less successful) hijackings in 1972, Boeing 727 aircraft were ordered by the Federal Aviation Administration to be fitted with a device known as a "Cooper Vane", a mechanical aerodynamic wedge, which prevents the rear stairway from being lowered in flight.

One of the 1972 hijackings was by a man named Richard McCoy Jr, a Vietnam veteran and a pilot who got away with $500,000 but was captured, escaped, and was killed in a subsequent gunfight.

In August 2000 The Oregonian newspaper ran a column asking for people who had information to come forward, and a woman called Jo Weber from Florida called to say that she suspected that her late husband, Duane Weber, was D. B. Cooper. Ralph Himmerlsbach, who was in charge of the FBI investigation from 1971-1980 thought that Duane was a credible suspect, although there was no solid evidence to connect him to the crime.