Out of the Blue
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Robbery at 30,000
feet
Adventures in real-life airplane
stickups. (And you thought hijacking
hardly happened anymore.)

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By Elliott Neal Hester

July 14, 2000 | Last week, like a
scene out of a John Woo action
movie, a group of armed bandits robbed a commercial jetliner
as it prepared to take off from the international airport in
Bras?lia, Brazil. They escaped with 132 pounds of gold. Value:
about $500,000.

According to news reports, as many as 15 men were involved
in the July 6 heist. Armed with machine guns, they
overpowered guards at the VASP Brazilian Airlines cargo
terminal and drove two vehicles onto the tarmac. Not far away,
three suitcases filled with gold were being transferred from an
armored car to a VASP airplane bound for P?rto Alegre. The
precious metal was the property of a mining company and had
been flown to the airport by helicopter.

The robbers approached the plane,
overpowered workers and snatched the
three heavy suitcases. During the getaway,
they exchanged gunfire with federal police
who had arrived at the scene. Though none
of the 70 passengers was injured during the
shootout, a bullet struck the airplane’s wing,
missing a fuel tank by inches.

In all the confusion, the gang left behind one
suitcase containing 50 pounds of gold. They
escaped in stolen vehicles with one hostage,
who was released the next morning.

“This was a very rapid operation, very well-planned,” said a
spokesman for the Federal District Military Police. “They
certainly spent a lot of time reviewing how to do it.”

In contrast to this orchestrated ground attack, the May 25
robbery aboard a Philippine Airlines jet was a poorly planned
in-flight affair that ended in disaster.

With 278 passengers and 12 crew members onboard, the
Airbus 330 had just taken off from Davao, Philippines, for a
90-minute flight to Manila. After the cabin crew completed the
snack service, a man wearing a blue ski mask suddenly
appeared near the cockpit. With a pistol in one hand and a
grenade in the other, the man, later identified as Reginald Chua,
seized flight attendant Meg Bueno. He said, “This is a holdup!
This is a holdup!” He then forced Bueno to open the cockpit
door.

Once inside, Chua told the pilots to return to Davao. When
they said there wasn’t enough fuel, he demanded cash. Reports
say Emmanuel Generoso, the senior pilot, offered his own
money. “He was very angry, very temperamental,” Generoso
said. “The man said, ‘If you do not do what I say, we will die
together.’”

At some point the gun fired, but no one was hit.

Still, Chua wanted more money. Ida Marie Bernasconi, a local
TV news reporter, was a passenger on the flight. “He collected
all the money he could from the passengers,” she said.
Bernasconi said she assisted the crew in the collection process.
After the money was gathered, it was placed in a small plastic
bag and given to the hijacker.

At Chua’s insistence, the pilot descended to 6,000 feet and the
cabin was depressurized. While the plane circled Manila, the
hijacker donned a homemade parachute, which he produced
from his backpack. He then told a crew member to open the
rear door. Despite the powerful gust of wind that initially blew
him backward, he astonished everyone onboard and jumped.

An on-ground witness reported seeing someone parachute out
of the Philippine Airlines jet. But the homemade parachute did
not remain intact. Chua plummeted to a gruesome death. “I
saw the parachute separate from the person,” said Basilio
Gesmundo, chief of Liabac, a small village east of Manila.

National police chief Panfilo Lacson told reporters, “The body
was embedded in the ground with only the hands protruding.”

D.B. Cooper — the infamous hijacker who parachuted from a
commercial jet with $200,000 in ransom money strapped to his
body — may have suffered a similar fate. On Nov. 24, 1971,
the night before Thanksgiving, he hijacked Northwest Airlines
Flight 305, bound to Seattle from Portland. Claiming to have a
bomb, Cooper demanded the ransom and four parachutes.
When the plane landed three hours later at Seattle-Tacoma
Airport, he received the money and the parachutes; in
exchange, he released the passengers but kept four crew
members on the aircraft.

After refueling, the Boeing 727 took off for Mexico. Cooper
instructed the pilot to fly no higher than 10,000 feet with the
landing gear down — a ploy designed to slow down the plane
and make it easier for him to jump. At approximately 8:13
p.m., 30 minutes after takeoff, he opened the jet’s rear stairway
and parachuted out. Tied around his waist was a 21-pound
bag stuffed with 10,000 $20 bills.

Unlike in the Chua case, Cooper’s body was never found. As a
result, he has evolved into a sort of aviation folk hero. The
town of Airel, Wash., close to where authorities believe the
hijacker landed, still holds an annual D.B. Cooper ceremony to
commemorate the event. Robert Duvall and Treat Williams
starred in a 1981 movie about him (“The Pursuit of D.B.
Cooper”), and former FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach wrote a
book about the ordeal (“NORJAK: The Investigation of D.B.
Cooper”). Himmelsbach believes the hijacker died not far from
where he touched down.

The case remains the only unsolved domestic airplane hijacking
in U.S. history.