WEBVTT - What was the Golden Age of Hijacking? 0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:02.280 Guess what, mengo, what's that? Well, all right, so this 0:00:02.360 --> 0:00:04.360 may be a weird question, but did you ever hear 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:08.879 the story about Norway's first skyjacking? So I don't really 0:00:08.920 --> 0:00:11.880 keep up with the countries first skyjackings. Well this one's 0:00:11.920 --> 0:00:14.480 worth noting because it's it's actually kind of funny. As 0:00:14.520 --> 0:00:18.439 strange as this sounds, but this was long after the 0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:21.680 golden age of skyjackings, and there was this lone wolf 0:00:21.720 --> 0:00:23.680 who hopped onto the plane. He got up to the 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:25.720 front of the plane that was carrying a hundred and 0:00:25.760 --> 0:00:29.720 sixteen passengers, and he demanded to talk to the Prime 0:00:29.760 --> 0:00:32.920 Minister of Norway and their Minister of Justice. He wanted 0:00:32.960 --> 0:00:34.559 to talk to both of these people. They weren't on 0:00:34.600 --> 0:00:37.639 the plane. He just insisted he needed to talk to them. Now. 0:00:37.640 --> 0:00:39.400 He had a gun, and he claimed to have more 0:00:39.440 --> 0:00:42.760 explosives hidden on him, but he didn't really have a plan. 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:45.440 He just kind of let the plane go on its course. 0:00:45.920 --> 0:00:49.240 But then it lands and he starts negotiating. Of course, 0:00:49.280 --> 0:00:51.600 you know, the guy had been drinking heavily the whole time, 0:00:51.680 --> 0:00:55.400 so he wasn't the world's best negotiator. So first he 0:00:55.520 --> 0:00:58.480 let off seventy passengers or so, you know, just just because. 0:00:58.600 --> 0:01:00.480 And then he said he let the rest of the 0:01:00.520 --> 0:01:04.080 passengers go, if the pilots would just taxi the plane 0:01:04.120 --> 0:01:06.200 on up to the terminal, that's what they're supposed to 0:01:06.200 --> 0:01:09.360 do anyway, I know, but he demanded that they do 0:01:09.440 --> 0:01:12.120 that as well. So then once he drunk through the 0:01:12.120 --> 0:01:14.720 plane supply of beer, he said he'd turn over his 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:17.200 weapons if he could just get a little bit more 0:01:17.280 --> 0:01:19.360 to drink. You know, he wasn't quite done with this, 0:01:19.800 --> 0:01:22.360 so he wanted another beer too, And then of course 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:26.000 when the authorities brought him the beverage delivery, they arrested him. 0:01:26.080 --> 0:01:28.840 That is so sad, I mean, like he's like the 0:01:28.880 --> 0:01:32.080 world's worst skyjacker and he didn't even take the plane 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:34.680 somewhere fun or get his message to the government, I know, 0:01:34.760 --> 0:01:37.120 I mean, I don't really think he had a message 0:01:37.120 --> 0:01:40.000 other than that he was maybe dissatisfied with his life. 0:01:40.040 --> 0:01:42.280 But it does kind of get into something that we 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:45.840 want to talk about today. Why were skyjackers so obsessed 0:01:45.840 --> 0:01:49.080 with commandeering planes? And was there a Bonnie and Clyde 0:01:49.080 --> 0:01:53.080 of skyjackers? And why was there a golden age of skyjacking? 0:01:53.640 --> 0:01:58.040 And that's what we're talking about today, So let's dive ina. 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:19.799 Hey there, podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm 0:02:19.800 --> 0:02:21.640 Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good 0:02:21.639 --> 0:02:24.000 friend Mangesha Ticketer. And on the other side of the 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:27.760 soundproof glass slowly creasing. I think those are our show notes, 0:02:27.800 --> 0:02:31.160 say to these paper planes and throwing. Look at that 0:02:31.200 --> 0:02:33.640 one that was like soaring. Those things are glide. That's 0:02:33.639 --> 0:02:37.280 pretty impressive. That's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. I 0:02:37.280 --> 0:02:39.400 didn't even realize he had such a good arm. I 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:41.720 had heard, you know, just from around the office. People 0:02:41.720 --> 0:02:43.840 like to talk about all the things that Tristan can do, 0:02:43.919 --> 0:02:47.040 so I had heard he had an incredible arm. But this, 0:02:47.040 --> 0:02:49.440 this really proves it. It is impressive. All right, Well, 0:02:49.480 --> 0:02:52.120 we'll spend another episode talking about all of Tristan's talents, 0:02:52.120 --> 0:02:54.720 but why don't we dive into this one? So, Mango, 0:02:55.000 --> 0:02:58.959 what was the golden age of skyjacking? So this is 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:01.040 actually an era I didn't know much about until I've 0:03:01.040 --> 0:03:03.680 read this incredible book. It's called The Skies Belonged to 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:06.839 Us by Brendan Corner, and most of today's research comes 0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:09.400 out of that book. And of course we've supplemented it 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:12.600 with stories and facts we've pulled from other sources. But listeners, 0:03:12.639 --> 0:03:15.560 if you're at all interested in this topic, definitely pick 0:03:15.639 --> 0:03:18.120 up Corners book The Skies Belonged to Us because it 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:23.320 is fascinating. So the Golden Age was basically between nineteen 0:03:23.360 --> 0:03:25.800 seventy two, and this is when security at airports was 0:03:25.840 --> 0:03:28.880 super lax, and over a hundred fifty flights were hijacked 0:03:28.880 --> 0:03:31.960 in the American airspace during that time. Supposedly, at the 0:03:31.960 --> 0:03:34.280 height of the trend, planes were hijacked nearly once and 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:37.640 sometimes twice a week. Yeah, I mean there were stories 0:03:37.640 --> 0:03:40.120 of pilots who have been hijacked multiple times. It was 0:03:40.160 --> 0:03:43.280 almost routine by that point. And so we're passengers being 0:03:43.400 --> 0:03:46.280 killed during this or what was happening? No, So that's 0:03:46.280 --> 0:03:49.200 the crazy thing, right, Like the hijackers were mostly pretty 0:03:49.240 --> 0:03:52.400 civil and the airlines handled it all very coolly. So 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:54.880 often a hijacker just wanted to save passage out of 0:03:54.880 --> 0:03:57.560 the country, or wanted money, or to make some sort 0:03:57.600 --> 0:04:00.240 of political statement. And you read the story and you 0:04:00.280 --> 0:04:03.680 can't imagine how many hijackings are just happening one after another. 0:04:04.120 --> 0:04:06.360 It's like people just walked onto planes and decided to 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:10.480 hijack them on the spot. It's business people, academics, blue 0:04:10.480 --> 0:04:13.280 collar workers, people who were out of work, kids. I mean, 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:15.920 there are more than a few stories of teenagers doing this, 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:18.520 and supposedly every time there was press about a new 0:04:18.600 --> 0:04:22.279 type of hijacking like skijacking, a plan for political justice 0:04:22.360 --> 0:04:25.480 then something that would lead to all these copycats. I mean, 0:04:25.560 --> 0:04:28.640 it's truly insane to read these accounts, but from my 0:04:28.760 --> 0:04:31.240 reading of the era, it really does seem like it 0:04:31.279 --> 0:04:33.919 was also more of an innocent time and these hijackers 0:04:33.960 --> 0:04:36.760 weren't really looking to harm or even bothered the passengers. 0:04:36.920 --> 0:04:39.440 I mean, that does sound weird to say, and and 0:04:39.480 --> 0:04:41.920 I know you don't want to downplay the violence, because 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:45.320 there were definitely some deaths and injuries, but it wasn't 0:04:45.360 --> 0:04:48.000 nearly as many as you'd expect from this time. And 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:50.080 this this is a little bit off topic, but from 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:53.159 that same period, I started reading this book called Days 0:04:53.200 --> 0:04:55.960 of Rage, just by Brian Burrow, and it's about Weatherman 0:04:56.080 --> 0:04:58.760 of the nineties seventies, and one of the things that 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:01.360 struck me was that this bi agent told the author 0:05:01.400 --> 0:05:05.120 that in nineteen seventy two, setting off bombs was actually 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:08.800 a pretty common way to voice political protests. And it's 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:11.600 baffling how many bombs went off without people getting hurt 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:14.040 during that time. The agent was saying that they were 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:17.640 over nineteen hundred bombings that year alone, and in an 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:21.400 eighteen months span there were actually twenty five hundred bombings. 0:05:21.400 --> 0:05:24.960 Can you imagine that? Twenty hundred bombings, and so sometimes 0:05:24.960 --> 0:05:28.080 they were like five protest bombings in a single day. 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:31.280 I mean, it's really unimaginable, like those sorts of numbers. Then, 0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:33.720 were there a lot of fatalities? No, I mean kind 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:35.720 of like you were saying with the sky jacking, that's 0:05:35.760 --> 0:05:38.479 that's kind of the thing that really weren't. People tended 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:42.279 to use these small explosives and they target these abandoned buildings, 0:05:42.720 --> 0:05:45.640 and the bombs were treated maybe like a public nuisance. 0:05:45.880 --> 0:05:47.960 And this sounds insane to say this, but they were 0:05:47.960 --> 0:05:50.120 almost treated as a way for a political group to 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:53.880 drop a press release. You'd have this explosion, they'd get 0:05:53.920 --> 0:05:56.960 some attention, and then they would make their statement. And 0:05:56.960 --> 0:05:59.679 according to Burrows, it was considered almost like the semi 0:05:59.720 --> 0:06:02.560 ex up to its strategy for being heard. It just 0:06:02.600 --> 0:06:05.440 sounds so lawless and I don't ever want to return 0:06:05.480 --> 0:06:07.680 to those times, but you can see how commandeering a 0:06:07.720 --> 0:06:11.000 massive air bus kind of has that same appeal. It 0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:13.960 seems both quaint but also shows how desperate people were 0:06:14.000 --> 0:06:17.080 to be heard. So I do want to get into 0:06:17.080 --> 0:06:19.200 the Golden Age. But your bombing story remind me about 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:21.440 one of the weirdest things I remember learning in college, 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:23.920 and it's that Yemen used to be considered one of 0:06:23.960 --> 0:06:26.640 the best places in the world to be kidnapped, Like 0:06:26.880 --> 0:06:29.719 it was really just about holding you until someone forked 0:06:29.720 --> 0:06:32.240 over at ransom. And this was kind of the practice 0:06:32.320 --> 0:06:35.080 even through the nine nineties. So I read this one 0:06:35.120 --> 0:06:37.840 account from an American diplomat who was kidnapped there, and 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:41.279 he said that while the initial shock of being kidnapped 0:06:41.360 --> 0:06:43.800 is of course unnerving, once he was brought to the 0:06:43.839 --> 0:06:47.719 kidnappers lair, they greeted him with this beautiful recited poem 0:06:47.839 --> 0:06:51.200 what And then they fed him well and offered him 0:06:51.240 --> 0:06:53.560 caught to chew, which is, you know, that mild stimulant. 0:06:53.839 --> 0:06:55.560 And there are other accounts of this too, like so 0:06:55.640 --> 0:06:58.479 the Washington Post had interviewed this man who was he 0:06:58.560 --> 0:07:00.760 was giving cigarettes and cookies and teed to keep his 0:07:00.800 --> 0:07:03.839 spirits up, and another person was you know, told to 0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:07.240 teach kids English to stave off his boredom, and allowed visitors, 0:07:07.279 --> 0:07:09.279 and he could go on these walking tours of the 0:07:09.320 --> 0:07:12.080 city and make phone calls home, and he was even 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:15.600 brought reading materials that he requested. It's crazy. I mean, 0:07:15.640 --> 0:07:18.080 I imagine the tourism board coming up with a slogan 0:07:18.120 --> 0:07:20.080 of like how they're the best place in the world 0:07:20.120 --> 0:07:23.120 to be kidnapped. And I don't want to make light 0:07:23.200 --> 0:07:25.640 of this, but it really is just so bizarre to 0:07:25.680 --> 0:07:28.120 read about this stuff, I know, and it was considered 0:07:28.160 --> 0:07:30.800 pretty normal. And often after a few days when the 0:07:30.920 --> 0:07:33.800 ransom payment had gone through, the kidnapped folks would emerge 0:07:33.800 --> 0:07:37.320 with souvenirs like they take home beautiful curved daggers and 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:41.120 luxurious robes. That guy who has read that beautiful poem, 0:07:41.240 --> 0:07:43.680 he still has a copee of that poem. It's insane. 0:07:44.960 --> 0:07:47.960 But obviously it's not like that anymore, especially since like 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:50.320 all Kinda and other extremists have gotten into the act 0:07:50.720 --> 0:07:53.360 now being kidnapped as much more deadly. And you know, 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:56.560 Yemen's four star kidnapping reviews have certainly gone down. Yeah, 0:07:56.560 --> 0:07:59.120 I mean, it is completely terrifying. But all right, well 0:07:59.200 --> 0:08:01.480 let's bring this back to the Golden age that we 0:08:01.480 --> 0:08:04.120 were talking about before. So just just to set the 0:08:04.160 --> 0:08:07.160 scene a little bit here, this general period was one 0:08:07.240 --> 0:08:10.480 of a lot of political unrest. We're talking about again, 0:08:10.600 --> 0:08:14.520 nineteen sixty one nineteen seventy two, and there's a lot 0:08:14.600 --> 0:08:16.920 going on, think about you know, the Vietnam War and 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:20.400 civil rights and hippies and black panthers, and you know, 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:23.000 the Cold War is going strong, and there's quite a 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:25.920 bit of political distrust of the establishment during this time. 0:08:26.400 --> 0:08:27.840 And of course you know there have been a few 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:31.400 skyjackings in other countries as well. Right, that's right, And 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:35.079 hijacking wasn't even the preferred terms, So hijackers were mostly 0:08:35.080 --> 0:08:38.040 called escape ease during this period, partially because hijacking was 0:08:38.080 --> 0:08:40.680 seen as this almost negative term that had been lingering 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:43.720 from the prohibition era. Yeah, you know, supposedly the term 0:08:43.800 --> 0:08:46.400 came from these highway robberies, you know, when a mobster 0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:49.000 would greet you with a friendly hijack and before of 0:08:49.040 --> 0:08:51.160 course taking your truck and all the alcohol that it 0:08:51.200 --> 0:08:54.600 was guarding. Yeah, but this was a little different since 0:08:54.640 --> 0:08:57.720 they weren't you know, typically mobsters. It was mostly people 0:08:57.760 --> 0:09:01.480 just defecting from communism, and there was an early case 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:05.120 of three different planes being simultaneously rerouted from Czechoslovakia to 0:09:05.160 --> 0:09:09.200 West Germany, where the defectors were welcomed like heroes. And 0:09:09.240 --> 0:09:11.680 then there was there was almost this like cute story 0:09:11.840 --> 0:09:14.640 where six hijackers took over a plane in Europe. They 0:09:14.679 --> 0:09:17.400 made the pilot fly over Lisbon so they could drop 0:09:17.480 --> 0:09:20.199 leaflets from the sky and it was just like print 0:09:20.200 --> 0:09:23.280 outs protesting the government there. And once they had sort 0:09:23.280 --> 0:09:25.480 of distributed all their flyers, they asked to be dropped 0:09:25.480 --> 0:09:28.800 off in Morocco. I mean, it makes it sound so harmless, 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:31.400 you know, but that people saw planes is their only 0:09:31.400 --> 0:09:34.240 way to flee from their home countries. Is it's really 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:36.800 interesting to think about, you know, Like during that time, 0:09:36.840 --> 0:09:39.280 there's all this back and forth of people fleeing Cuba 0:09:39.360 --> 0:09:41.440 to come to the States and then people demanding that 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:45.959 planes be rerouted to Havana. Yeah, that stuff is fascinating. 0:09:46.120 --> 0:09:48.200 In fact, the first U s light that was skyjacked 0:09:48.280 --> 0:09:50.120 was by a guy who wanted to be taken to Havana. 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:53.600 He took a knife into the cockpit and demanded the 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:56.520 plane go there. But what's Also interesting about the time 0:09:56.600 --> 0:09:58.600 is that you couldn't really take a plane that far. 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:02.040 What do you mean by that, Well, we're talking about 0:10:02.080 --> 0:10:04.319 the sixties and there's one story will get into the 0:10:04.400 --> 0:10:06.000 later of of a guy who wanted to be taken 0:10:06.040 --> 0:10:08.640 to North Korea, but a plane just wouldn't get you 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:11.160 that far. So even in the eighties when my family 0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:13.640 would go back to India, the trip would take forever. 0:10:14.000 --> 0:10:16.079 It was a twenty two hour journey. And the reason 0:10:16.200 --> 0:10:18.160 was that from JFK you'd have to make a pit 0:10:18.200 --> 0:10:20.760 stop in Paris or London, and then you fly to 0:10:20.840 --> 0:10:23.600 Cairo to refuel there, and then you go to Delhi 0:10:23.600 --> 0:10:26.880 to refuel, and then you get to Bombay. Like everyone 0:10:26.920 --> 0:10:28.960 on the plane was going from JFK to Bombay and 0:10:29.000 --> 0:10:32.760 it was ludicrous, right, But actually, in Corner's book, a 0:10:32.760 --> 0:10:35.400 lot of the stories are hijackers negotiating as their plane 0:10:35.440 --> 0:10:38.800 is being refueled or then being directed or redirected to 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:41.680 another airport before they're you know, getting their money in 0:10:41.720 --> 0:10:45.160 parachutes and then they take off for the international journey. 0:10:45.200 --> 0:10:47.680 But part of Havana's appeal was that you could actually 0:10:47.679 --> 0:10:50.680 touch ground in a communist nation without having to refuel 0:10:51.000 --> 0:10:53.440 just so strange. Well, you know, I was looking into 0:10:53.520 --> 0:10:57.079 the whole Cuba America relations during that time, and it's 0:10:57.160 --> 0:11:00.440 really interesting to see what was happening. So after Castro 0:11:00.559 --> 0:11:03.640 takes over, the Cubans start hijacking planes to land in 0:11:03.640 --> 0:11:07.560 the US. You're mostly Key West or Miami. And you know, 0:11:07.600 --> 0:11:09.800 one of the funny things was that this ad exact name, 0:11:09.880 --> 0:11:14.199 Irwin Harris, immediately started claiming these planes. His whole thing 0:11:14.240 --> 0:11:17.040 was that he'd run a super expensive tourism campaign for 0:11:17.080 --> 0:11:20.160 Havana and Castro and the government still owed him close 0:11:20.200 --> 0:11:24.000 to five hundred thousand dollars for his efforts, so kind 0:11:24.000 --> 0:11:26.560 of being a showman, he welcomed them as his own. 0:11:27.040 --> 0:11:29.840 But here's the weirdest part of this. The US government 0:11:29.880 --> 0:11:32.480 actually let him auction off the planes and keep the 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:36.319 money from this. Castro was obviously peeved that people were 0:11:36.360 --> 0:11:39.680 stealing Cuban planes and fleeing the country, but the fact 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:42.520 that the US wasn't giving the planes back and instead 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:44.960 letting Harris auction them off, I mean, that just got 0:11:45.040 --> 0:11:48.600 him angrier. And that was, of course the whole point. 0:11:48.600 --> 0:11:50.839 I mean, that's what the American government wanted to do, 0:11:50.960 --> 0:11:56.720 and so they let Harris sell eleven planes. Eleven planes 0:11:56.720 --> 0:11:59.560 feels insane. But at that time, the U S didn't 0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:02.600 really believe anyone would steal an American plan, right, Yeah, 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:04.439 that's right. I mean they were a little bit cocky 0:12:04.480 --> 0:12:06.280 about it because, you know, as they thought about it, 0:12:06.400 --> 0:12:09.040 like who would want to leave America? And so suddenly 0:12:09.080 --> 0:12:11.959 in nineteen sixty one, when a hijacker demands that a 0:12:12.040 --> 0:12:15.400 US plane reroute to Cuba, things start to shift a 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:18.360 little bit. So obviously Cuba becomes a big lure for 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:21.080 American dissidents, and people think they're going to be welcomed 0:12:21.120 --> 0:12:24.679 with open arms, and particularly those who have been disenfranchised. 0:12:24.960 --> 0:12:27.080 Because Castro was telling the world he's building a new 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:30.240 type of country. Yeah, you know, as one skyjacker put it, 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:33.360 as he saw the runway lights, quote, in a few hours, 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:35.679 it would be dawn in a new world. I was 0:12:35.720 --> 0:12:39.640 about to enter paradise. Cuba was creating a true democracy, 0:12:39.880 --> 0:12:43.880 a place where everyone was equal, where violence against blacks injustice, 0:12:44.000 --> 0:12:47.040 and racism, where things of the past. I'd come to 0:12:47.080 --> 0:12:50.280 Cuba to feel freedom at least once, you know. But 0:12:50.320 --> 0:12:53.079 of course that freedom he longed for wasn't really the case. 0:12:53.600 --> 0:12:56.040 And Castro loved that these flights were coming in because 0:12:56.040 --> 0:12:58.800 it humiliated the US and he got a little bit 0:12:58.800 --> 0:13:00.800 of ransom out of it. I think you charged the 0:13:00.800 --> 0:13:05.160 airlines something like bucks to return each plane. You know 0:13:05.200 --> 0:13:07.240 also that this is funny because the US and Cuba 0:13:07.320 --> 0:13:09.880 didn't interact, but there was actually this quick form to 0:13:09.920 --> 0:13:12.320 make that transaction happen, and they would have to do 0:13:12.360 --> 0:13:15.480 this through the Swiss embassy in Cuba. Just for being 0:13:15.520 --> 0:13:19.400 able to retrieve these planes. It's so strange, that's funny. Well, 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:21.760 how are the passengers on the planes treated like I 0:13:21.760 --> 0:13:23.960 I know in some cases passengers were let off on 0:13:24.000 --> 0:13:26.920 the first refueling, but uh, I'm guessing that always didn't 0:13:26.920 --> 0:13:30.000 happen in these kidnappings in Cuba. Well, you know, often 0:13:30.040 --> 0:13:32.560 the passengers on the planes got a nice night out 0:13:32.559 --> 0:13:34.240 of it, which you know, they'd they'd be put up 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:37.400 in a fancy Havannah hotel, they'd be given cigars and 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:40.760 smooth RUMs, the ability to go shopping, and then they 0:13:40.880 --> 0:13:43.240 just be put back on the plane and they'd go home. 0:13:43.800 --> 0:13:46.960 Hijacking was actually happening so often that Time magazine even 0:13:47.000 --> 0:13:50.000 put out a little guide for being skyjacked. And you 0:13:50.000 --> 0:13:53.080 know how to make the most of that experience. It's 0:13:53.120 --> 0:13:54.760 so weird. I was looking at some of the tips 0:13:54.760 --> 0:13:57.200 and they're like one of them was don't ring the 0:13:57.240 --> 0:13:59.040 button for the flight attendant, since that, you know, that 0:13:59.040 --> 0:14:03.000 could startle the hide jacker. So great, but also recommended 0:14:03.040 --> 0:14:06.680 the chorus lines and Dacris and shopping for East German cameras, 0:14:06.720 --> 0:14:08.240 you know, which you could get for a steel in 0:14:08.280 --> 0:14:12.600 Havannah's markets. That's so weird. And what happened to the hijackers, now, 0:14:12.640 --> 0:14:16.040 this is actually a pretty different story. Castro was was 0:14:16.120 --> 0:14:19.280 really full of contempt for these hijackers, so they weren't 0:14:19.280 --> 0:14:21.760 treated like Harris. And why is that. Well, he didn't 0:14:21.760 --> 0:14:24.200 want revolutionaries in his country, is really what it came 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:26.240 down to. So, you know, when they landed, they were 0:14:26.280 --> 0:14:30.240 taken in for these brutal interrogations. Castro was actually convinced 0:14:30.280 --> 0:14:32.800 that some of these people were spies for the US government. 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:35.760 You know, depending on what the interrogators thought, their fate 0:14:35.840 --> 0:14:38.360 was made up for them. Some of them ended up 0:14:38.360 --> 0:14:42.240 in sugarcane fields, which was just nightmarish, and you know, 0:14:42.280 --> 0:14:45.120 some people were lashed and beaten and the conditions were 0:14:45.120 --> 0:14:48.160 pretty terrifying. The other option was being sent to a 0:14:48.200 --> 0:14:51.880 place called the Hijackers House. And at one point this building, 0:14:51.920 --> 0:14:55.160 which was just like two stories tall, it had sixty 0:14:55.240 --> 0:14:58.560 hijackers there, but they got a stipend of I think 0:14:58.600 --> 0:15:01.920 it was forty pasos and onth But the living wasn't easy. 0:15:02.240 --> 0:15:04.840 I think each person only got about fifteen or sixteen 0:15:04.920 --> 0:15:08.200 square feet of personal space when they were living there. Honestly, 0:15:08.240 --> 0:15:10.440 I didn't really think about the fact that there would 0:15:10.440 --> 0:15:13.720 be like sixty hijackers stuck in one communist house. It 0:15:13.960 --> 0:15:16.920 kind of sounds like the worst season of the real world. Like, 0:15:17.520 --> 0:15:20.520 but why did people still come to Cuba? I don't know, 0:15:20.560 --> 0:15:22.880 man Go, I've seen some pretty terrible seasons of the 0:15:22.920 --> 0:15:27.080 real world. But to your question, I have read a 0:15:27.120 --> 0:15:29.440 few accounts of this, and you know, even though the 0:15:29.480 --> 0:15:32.280 information about the conditions in Cuba was being covered by 0:15:32.280 --> 0:15:35.640 the press and spreading to the US, people were still 0:15:35.680 --> 0:15:38.880 just kind of hopelessly starry eyed that Castro would see 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:42.360 their case differently. Actually, let let me just quote Corner here. 0:15:42.360 --> 0:15:45.760 He says, um, every skyjacker was an optimist at heart, 0:15:46.160 --> 0:15:48.960 supremely confident that his story would be the one to 0:15:48.960 --> 0:15:51.880 touch Castro. The twenty eight year old air to a 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:54.920 New Mexico real estate fortune. He had hijacked the Delta 0:15:54.960 --> 0:15:59.320 Airlines jet while inexplicably dressed as a cowboy. You've got 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:02.400 so she allo student from Kalamazoo, Michigan who wanted to 0:16:02.400 --> 0:16:05.960 study communism firsthand. You've also got a thirty four year 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:08.720 old Cuban exile, and he diverted a flight because he 0:16:08.760 --> 0:16:11.840 could no longer bear to live without his mother's delicately 0:16:11.920 --> 0:16:15.840 seasoned free holays. So the list goes on and on. 0:16:15.960 --> 0:16:18.480 It's just crazy. Well, I want to get into what 0:16:18.520 --> 0:16:20.600 the airlines did and why it took them so long 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:23.520 to fight back. But before that, let's take a quick break. 0:16:36.880 --> 0:16:38.680 So welcome back to Part time Genius, and we're talking 0:16:38.680 --> 0:16:41.280 about the golden age of hijacking. Well, did I ever 0:16:41.320 --> 0:16:42.640 tell you about the time I was in the kind 0:16:42.640 --> 0:16:46.960 of Do airport. I'm not sure. Maybe. So this was 0:16:48.160 --> 0:16:50.600 just before the millennium, and I was done with my 0:16:50.600 --> 0:16:53.440 study of broad program and leaving a few days early 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:56.600 just to visit my relatives in India. And at the 0:16:56.720 --> 0:16:58.560 front of the airport and come and Do there was 0:16:58.600 --> 0:17:01.880 an X ray machine, but the line for it was insane. 0:17:01.960 --> 0:17:05.320 And you know, I'm curious, so I looked a little closer, 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:08.520 and for a single machine, there was just so much 0:17:08.560 --> 0:17:11.400 bureaucracy going on around it. Like there was one guy 0:17:11.440 --> 0:17:13.639 who was barking orders, making sure you took all your 0:17:13.640 --> 0:17:15.439 belongings and put them on the conveyor belt in the 0:17:15.480 --> 0:17:17.720 right order, and then there was someone else kind of 0:17:17.760 --> 0:17:20.679 rearranging and repacking them as they fed into this X 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:23.080 ray machine. And then there was a third guy on 0:17:23.119 --> 0:17:25.679 the other side, and he was meticulously putting stickers on 0:17:25.760 --> 0:17:27.800 each bag to show what had gone through the machine. 0:17:28.160 --> 0:17:30.440 But no one was actually looking at the X ray part. 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:33.639 So did you end up saying anything? I mean, who 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:35.959 do you tell? Right? Like, I just kind of noticed 0:17:36.000 --> 0:17:38.440 and laughed it off, and that's usually where I cut 0:17:38.480 --> 0:17:41.560 the story off. But this is the scary part. So 0:17:41.680 --> 0:17:43.679 someone else must have been noticing too, because two or 0:17:43.720 --> 0:17:46.160 three days later, the same afternoon flight I took from 0:17:46.160 --> 0:17:50.639 Cutman due to DELI on the same airline was actually hijack. Yeah, 0:17:50.680 --> 0:17:53.160 it's insane, right, So they took the plane to Afghanistan 0:17:53.240 --> 0:17:55.520 and it was tense. There were people on the tarmac 0:17:55.600 --> 0:17:58.280 For two days. I was glued to the TV because 0:17:58.440 --> 0:18:01.000 I was really afraid I knew someone on the plane. Uh. 0:18:01.040 --> 0:18:03.119 This was also a flight that I thought about taking, 0:18:03.240 --> 0:18:06.200 you know, postponing my trip by two days. But thankfully, 0:18:06.240 --> 0:18:08.159 no one on the plane was hurt. And this was 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:10.720 pre nine eleven, so it was before there were these 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:13.280 really strict security measures that most of these airports. I 0:18:13.640 --> 0:18:15.920 think when I flew out of Philadelphia that summer earlier 0:18:15.960 --> 0:18:18.040 for my trip, my parents even dropped me off at 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:20.119 the gate before I went. And I'm not sure if 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:22.320 you remember that, but like people could actually go to 0:18:22.359 --> 0:18:25.480 the gates or receive you there. It's crazy, but it's 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:27.879 almost hard to remember what security used to look like 0:18:27.920 --> 0:18:30.880 in the eighties or nineties, let alone in the sixties. Yeah, 0:18:30.920 --> 0:18:33.159 that's true. I mean security was definitely lax in the 0:18:33.240 --> 0:18:36.080 sixties and it's pretty fascinating to read about it because 0:18:36.119 --> 0:18:39.600 you know, the responsibility was pretty much on the airlines 0:18:39.680 --> 0:18:42.199 to maintain that security. So why is that. Well, they 0:18:42.240 --> 0:18:44.639 didn't want to spend money on the security to stop 0:18:44.680 --> 0:18:48.040 these hijackings. I mean, they're they're big thing was no violence. 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:50.640 And when they did this risk benefit analysis and they 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:53.199 decided to calculate it out the way they saw it 0:18:53.240 --> 0:18:56.359 was as long as the passengers weren't being harmed, it 0:18:56.400 --> 0:18:58.919 was actually cheaper for the airlines to just comply with 0:18:58.960 --> 0:19:01.760 a hijacker. They'd agree to send him on a joy ride, 0:19:01.800 --> 0:19:03.959 maybe give them a little bit of ransom money, and 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:06.800 just deal with all the canceled flights that happened because 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:09.360 of this, And that was all seen as preferable rather 0:19:09.400 --> 0:19:12.800 than paying for more security at the airports. And you know, 0:19:12.840 --> 0:19:14.639 you also look at ticket sales at the time, I mean, 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:17.440 they were at an all time high in the airlines 0:19:17.480 --> 0:19:20.320 believe that subjecting people to checking bags and patting them 0:19:20.400 --> 0:19:23.200 down was it was kind of like treating them like criminals. 0:19:23.640 --> 0:19:25.560 And so they didn't want ticket sales to drop from 0:19:25.600 --> 0:19:28.200 any of these measures, so they fought tooth and nail 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:31.359 against adding any security. In fact, they had a really 0:19:31.400 --> 0:19:34.600 strong lobbying arm just to prevent that from happening. It's 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:36.720 really weird to think about that airlines weren't actually trying 0:19:36.760 --> 0:19:40.200 to lessen the threat of hijackings. And it's also interesting 0:19:40.240 --> 0:19:43.520 that like skyjacking evolved and how it evolved, Like people 0:19:43.560 --> 0:19:45.760 were stealing planes in the nineteen sixties, and it was 0:19:45.800 --> 0:19:48.240 always to fly to a different country. But the airlines 0:19:48.240 --> 0:19:50.520 were caught off guard the first time someone actually demanded 0:19:50.520 --> 0:19:53.520 a ransom. Why would that be? I guess it just 0:19:53.600 --> 0:19:56.199