What was the biggest plane hijacking in history?

1985 – TWA Flight 847 The hijackers, Mohammed Ali Hamadei alongside another person, held the plane's 153 passengers and crew hostage for 17 days, forcing the plane's captain to go back and forth several times between Algeria and Lebanon before landing in Beirut.



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In May 2021, a Ryanair commercial jet was intercepted by Belarusian authorities while flying over Belarus on route to Vilnius, Lithuania. This occurrence is considered to be the most recent hijacking incident in the global aviation industry.

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Cooper. D.B. Cooper, also known as Dan Cooper, criminal who in 1971 hijacked a commercial plane traveling from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington, and later parachuted out of the aircraft with the ransom money.

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There are currently about 18,000 commercial flights a day, and if that person's trip has four flights associated with it, the odds against that person's being on a crashed plane are about 135,000 to 1. If there were only one hijacked plane per month, the odds would be about 540,000 to 1.

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Soon after the attacks, however, new rules of engagement were introduced, authorizing the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) – the Air Force command tasked with protecting U.S. airspace – to shoot down hijacked commercial airliners if the plane is deemed a threat to strategic targets.

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Reflecting this increase in miles flown, preliminary estimates of the total number of accidents involving a U.S. registered civilian aircraft increased from 1,139 in 2020 to 1,225 in 2021. The number of civil aviation deaths increased from 349 in 2020 to 376 in 2021.

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It remains the only unsolved hijacking in US aviation history. An artist's rendering of D.B. Cooper, who hijacked Northwest Orient Flight 305 out of Portland, Oregon, and demanded $200,000 in ransom.

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Airport security and screening in the United States were centralized under the new Department of Homeland Security. Airlines trained their crews to be more vigilant about violent or unruly passengers and to deal with them more effectively. Cockpit doors were reinforced and kept locked in flight.

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In the event of a hijacking, the pilot should divert and land the aircraft at the nearest suitable airport, where controllers can prioritize its landing and provide necessary assistance.

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But whilst hijackings can seem like a modern form of terrorism, they have a long history: in fact, hijackings today are very rare and much less frequent than the past. Airline hijacking – sometimes termed 'skyjacking' – is the unlawful seizure of an aircraft, either by an individual or an organized group.

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British European Airways Flight 548 was a scheduled passenger flight from London Heathrow to Brussels that crashed near Staines, England, soon after take-off on 18 June 1972, killing all 118 people on board. The accident became known as the Staines air disaster.

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