Dayda Banks

D. B. Cooper is a media epithet used to refer to an unidentified man who hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft in United States airspace on the afternoon of November 24, 1971. The aircraft was operated by Northwest Orient Airlines and was flying from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington. The hijacker extorted $200,000 in ransom (equivalent to $1,278,000 in 2020), asked to be flown to Reno, Nevada, then parachuted to an uncertain fate over southwestern Washington part-way through the second flight. A small portion of the ransom was found along the banks of the Columbia River in 1980, which triggered renewed interest but ultimately only deepened the mystery; the great majority of the ransom remains unrecovered. The man purchased his airline ticket using the alias Dan Cooper but, because of a news miscommunication, became known in popular culture as D. B. Cooper. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) maintained an active investigation for 45 years after the hijacking. Despite compiling an extensive case file over that period, no definitive conclusions were reached regarding Cooper's true identity or fate. The crime remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in commercial aviation history. Numerous theories of widely varying plausibility have been proposed over the years by investigators, reporters, and amateur enthusiasts. The FBI's best guess is that Cooper did not survive the jump, for several reasons: the rainy and dangerous conditions for skydiving on the night of the hijacking; Cooper's lack of proper equipment; the landing area being a wilderness; the apparent lack of detailed knowledge Cooper had of his landing area; and the rest of the ransom money never turning up even after decades, suggesting it was never spent. The FBI officially suspended active investigation of the case in July 2016. The hijacking had major implications for commercial aviation and airport security. Cooper's brazen hijacking, and a slew of Cooper imitators in the following year, caused security procedure to become stricter. Metal detectors and compulsory searching of baggage became standard, and paying for flights the same day of their departure with cash became a cause for scrutiny. Aircraft design was modified with Cooper vanes that would prevent the aft staircase from being lowered while in flight. By 1973, the pace of hijackings greatly slowed as the new security measures successfully dissuaded would-be hijackers whose motive was only money.