The narrative is a story of a hijacking that took place on November 24, 1971, in Portland, Oregon. The hijacker, known as Cooper, was a 40-45 year old man who boarded a Northwest Orient Airlines flight to Seattle, Washington. He was dressed in a dark business suit and carried a black umbrella and a black raincoat.
Upon boarding, he purchased 192 tickets for the flight, paying $20 in cash. He was the only passenger on the flight, which had a total of 42 people on board, including the crew. Cooper was seated in the middle of the plane, with a briefcase in front of him. He wore dark glasses, smoked a cigarette, and drank water and soda during the flight.
Once the plane took off, Cooper revealed that he had a bomb and demanded $200,000, four parachutes, and two prime back parachutes. If his demands were not met, he threatened to blow up the plane. He also demanded that a truck full of money be left on the runway to refill the plane after it landed.
Here are the key facts extracted from the text:
- A man named Dan Cooper hijacked a Northwest Orient Airlines flight on November 24, 1971, with a bomb and demanded $200,000 and four parachutes.
- He jumped from the plane with the money and a parachute somewhere between Seattle and Reno, and was never found or identified.
- The only evidence of his whereabouts was some of the money that was discovered on a beach in 1980, but the origin and fate of the rest of the money and Cooper himself remain unknown.
- The case is the only unsolved hijacking in American history and has generated many theories and suspects over the years.