Is D. B. Cooper the guy who stole money, jumped out of the plane and was never seen again?
Yes, he hijacked a plane, demanded ransom money and to be taken to another airport, in mid-flight he jumped out of the plane with the money and has never been seen or heard from again. This all took place in 1971. In 1980 a boy was playing in the sand by the river in the woods north of Portland when he found $5800 of the ransom money, but nothing else has ever been found, and a shitload of treasure hunters tried searching the areas around where the money was found.
They tried dumping dummies from the aircraft trying get an idea of where he might have landed. They even had a super secret (at the time) SR-71 spy plane fly over photograph the area where he jumped looking for clues.
Jumping from an airliner is a lot more dangerous than the movies make it out to be. An airliner in the 60's and 70's flew between 525 and 575 miles per hour. The only thing that allowed him to exit the aircraft w/o being beaten to death against its side was the fact that the old 727's actually had stairs that lowered from the tail, and there were no safeties to keep them from being opened during flight. Guess they figured no one would WANT to open them in flight. Even exiting as he did, it's still extremely dangerous given the vortices and turbulence that an aircraft travelling that fast would generate. Not to mention the fight the pilots would've had to keep it in the air once he started opening hatches, lol.
The whole thing sparked major changes in aircraft and airport security, and caused protocols to be put in place between law enforcement and airlines. Back then airlines could kinda do what they wanted when it came to those situations because there had never really been any of them.
Thus endeth the history lesson, lol
