in November of 1971 Dan DB Cooper hijacked a Boeing 727 and jumped out in
the middle of night in a rainstorm so what would the pilots have been thinking
I'll explain it all coming up
hey 74 crew welcome back if you don't know me my name is Kelsey I'm a 747
pilot my channel 74 gear is all about aviation today I'm here in rainy
Incheoh South Korea and this is the view from my hotel room a while back someone
in the 74 crew left a comment asking if I could explain the DB Cooper
story and what a pilot would have been thinking if you don't know the story Dan
DB Cooper hijacked a Boeing 727 and used ransom to get the equivalent of what
today would be about a million dollars $1,000,000
then got them to take off again and jump out the back of the plane he's never
been found and the money's never been found the fact that he was able to
accomplish this Boeing then changed and modified the Boeing 727 to prevent this
from happening in the future and they named the part after Dan Cooper let's
get into it if you aren't familiar with the story
here the highlights Cooper was riding on the aircraft of Boeing 727 in he wrote a
note and handed it to the flight attendant now if you don't know this
flight attendants commonly get hit on by a lot of passengers and probably more
than anybody pilots nothing nothing so she took that note
and threw it in her purse Cooper saw that she didn't even look at
the note she just threw it in her purse so he said I think you're gonna want to
look at that note on that note it basically said I have a bomb now that
definitely got her attention so before the aircraft landed in Seattle
Cooper requested $200,000 and four parachutes to Maine and two reserved
shoots in exchange for that money in those parachutes and refueling the
aircraft Cooper was gonna let everybody on the aircraft go except for the flight
crew and one flight attendant so when the parachutes and the money arrived
they brought him to the a stare of the aircraft they loaded him on and Cooper
let everybody go except the flight attendant and the flight crew so two
pilots and one flight engineer if you're unfamiliar with what the stairs look
like on the aft part of a 727 this is the picture of it here now remember this
because it's relevant for the rest of this story Cooper told the pilots he
wanted them to fly at a hundred knots which is about a hundred and fifteen
miles an hour he also told them that he was
to take off with the stairs down and leave the gear down eventually he was
convinced that taking off with the stairs down would not be safe and so
they took off with the stairs up and he decided he would lower those stairs in
flight if I were the pilot at this point I probably be thinking man I really
should have taken a job flying cargo I'm messing with you guys
I'm just kidding the reality is I really enjoy actually flying passengers it's a
good mix up because when you're flying passengers it's fun it's different when
you're flying cargo it's the same thing so there's goods and bats of both so at
7:40 at night the plane took off with the flight crew and the flight attendant
and they took off in about eight o'clock he ordered the flight attendant to go
into the flight deck and close the door from there he lowered the aft stairs in
flight they left the plane unpressurized so there would be no difference except
just a huge amount of noise and wind that was blowing around inside the
aircraft because he ordered the pilots to stay at 10,000 feet the oxygen
situation wasn't going to be an issue for the flight crew or the flight
attendant or DB cooper and at 10:15 the flight crew landed and it's my
understanding they'll end with the aft stairs down so that's a general story of
DB Cooper and what happened now from a pilot's perspective there are a few
considerations and concerns I would have if I were the pilots first jets fly at a
much higher altitude usually 30 to 40 thousand feet there are a lot more fuel
efficient at that altitude at 10,000 feet they're not very fuel-efficient
however they could calculate and figure out what the fuel burn was gonna be
going from Seattle to Reno at 10,000 feet they had the technology now to do
it with the computer and probably in the 70s there was some math way to figure it
out which I have no idea how they did it actually that would not surprise me the
thing that they would not be able to calculate is the aft stairs being down
that entire duration of the flight those stairs being down are going to cause a
lot of dread now since there was nobody on the plane except for the flight crew
the flight attendant and Dan Cooper I'm sure that he probably put a lot of extra
gas on the plane so it was really not a big deal but having the gear down is a
lot of drag having to stare down so a lot of drag and then flying at 10,000
feet is not very fuel-efficient so the pilot that would definitely be a concern
I would have going at that speed that loaf
that long I'd want to make sure and probably everybody up there including
the flight engineer we're really focused on what that fuel burn was gonna be to
make sure they could safely land at the airport now when you ordered the flight
attendant to go into the flight deck and close the door at that time in the 70s
there wasn't a people like we have now now from the flight deck we can actually
see back and it's for a safety reasons we can see back there
to make sure there's nobody around and in some cases there's cameras to make
sure that we can see that there's nobody around or there's no danger as the
pilots are leaving to go to the bathroom but at this time there was no people the
reality is I think it would've been pretty cool to be standing at that door
and watching Cooper jump out of the back of the plane now let's be honest if it
happened now the flight attendant probably would have had her phone up to
that people and watched Cooper jump out the back and record it on her phone for
Instagram and by flight attendant I mean me I would have made the flight
attendant sit down and I would have recorded that it's funny because it's
true since Cooper told the flight crew that
he had a bomb and he had told them not to leave the flight deck they assume
that he jumped out around 8:00 something o'clock because there was a shift in the
aircraft and they had to reach REM the aircraft but they didn't know for sure
exactly what had happened and the fact that he had a bomb and everything that
was going on they never came out of the flight deck it's my understanding that
at 10:15 when they landed in Reno they landed with the aft cargo stairs down
now my concern would be again as a pilot is landing like that as you can imagine
if you're in a flare the backside of that plane is going to slam into the
ground so what you'd be trying to do is land as flat as possible not to preserve
the stairs because who really cares but you're not looking to have something's
hit the ground first that could cause the safety of the landing to be
compromised I was told by some people that they were able to put the apt cargo
stairs up in flight and I couldn't find any pictures one way or the other were
to see what had really happened it's still a mystery today if Cooper survived
nobody really knows one way or the other they never found his body
however because of his success or unknown failure 15 different people
tried it the following year in 1972 all of them were unsuccessful also what
happened is they installed something called a cooper van
this vein basically allows so that way the door can't be open to flight which
is what Cooper did however that can be disarmed had then done his research he
would have known that he could have disarmed that vein and he would have
been able to still bring the stairs down in flight but they added that Cooper
vein so that way people couldn't do it on
their own without knowing how to disarm that what's also really interesting to
me as a pilot is just how cool he remained and how much knowledge he had
of this aircraft he knew about the flap settings and he wanted he knew he wanted
the gear down he knew the speed that he wanted he knew the altitude that he
wanted he'd obviously done his research and from all the reports that I read he
seemed to be very very calm about the whole thing
which I thought was pretty cool the heist in general reminded me kind of of
a cool bad guy version of James Bond and if you haven't seen the James Bond
Hollywood versus reality on Spectre that I did I will put a link to it right here
I look forward to hearing from you, until then keep the blue side up