Word: skyjackings
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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With those words, the first Palestinian skyjack of 1973 was under way. The jumbo jet's 123 passengers-all but nine of them Japanese-and 22 crew members were the captives of a terrorist team that evidently included both Palestinians and members of the fanatical Japanese leftist group called Rengo Sekigun (Red Army), which last year staged a massacre at Tel Aviv's Lod Airport that cost 26 lives. Astonishingly, Amsterdam airport authorities had been tipped off beforehand by the Israeli secret service that a skyjacking attempt might be imminent, but they took no special precautions...
Most courts have thus far avoided the complications of these "bonus" arrests, which are generally made without search warrants. Now Federal Judge Warren J. Ferguson in Los Angeles has become apparently the first judge to declare a skyjack search unconstitutional. He acted in the case of John K. Meulener, who tried to board an American Airlines flight and activated a magnetometer. Since Meulener also fitted the secret federal "skyjacker profile," which purports to list the characteristics of potential skyjackers, he was thoroughly searched. Authorities found 76 grams of heroin and more than half a kilo of marijuana in his suitcase...
...Federal Aviation Administration has ordered that beginning in January, comprehensive anti-skyjack precautions must be extended to all 531 U.S. commercial airports. Each airline's employees will have to search every package and piece of baggage that is hand-carried onto a commercial plane. Heretofore, this task has been done by ticket agents or other airline employees at big airports and has delayed some flights by as much as 45 minutes. Now the lines will be additionally required to equip all boarding areas with electronic metal-detecting devices that will check the passengers themselves. Trans World Airlines...
...pilot finally regained control of his plane and flew it back to Addis Ababa's Haile Selassie I airport. There the skyjackers were linked with the Eritrean Liberation Front, which has long been fighting to free Ethiopia's northernmost province. In 1970 two other Eritrean rebels attempted a similar skyjack. They were subdued by security men who neatly tucked towels on the seats behind the culprits and then slit their throats...
...elicited ensemble acting from this group that rates close to perfect. As for the Long Wharfs artistic director Arvin Brown, he knows viscerally what is good in drama, and season after season he presents it with honesty, professionalism and élan vital. Lincoln Center should beg, borrow or skyjack...