Before the 1970s, airport screening was very rarely heard of. In fact, it was only in response to a hijacking on Southern Airways Flight 49 in November 1972 that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) demanded that airport security should be strengthened.
According to Brendan Koerner, the writer of ‘The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking’, the requirement for all airline passengers to be screened only came about on January 5, 1973.
In the four years leading up to that date, the United States witnessed over 130 hijackings, with demands to be taken to communist Cuba among the most common reasons behind the terrorist attack.
The introduction of screening ended the ‘golden age of hijacking’ and 305 global hijackings between 1968 and 1972 were reduced to around 20 – 40 per year, according to Our World in Data.
Unfortunately, security initiatives did not prevent plane hijacking completely. Through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, some of the most barbaric events in aviation occurred.
It was only in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US that more stringent security rules, coupled with a rise in sophisticated technology, finally reduced aircraft hijacking to an extremely rare event.
Here, AeroTime looks back at five aircraft hijackings, from shocking acts of violence to a 52-year-old unsolved mystery.
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Source www.aerotime.aero
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