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Thursday 28 June 2012

N70775 Hijacking in El Paso, Texas in 1961

As many people know N70775 that operated Flight 11 had been hijacked the year prior and was badly damaged by FBI bullets in an attempt to stop it from being flown to Cuba as per the hijackers demands. Despite it ending well many of the hijacked passengers and crew were shaken up and not surprisingly there was a hefty bill for repair of the Boeing 707. It subsequently returned to service after Boeing and Continental engineers performed repair work. A number of bullets had pierced the fuselage and cabin floor and broken a window.

Here is a front page article sent to me by Jayne Specht from Oskaloosa. She is a wealth of knowledge on aviation matters during the 1960s as she worked in the industry. She also has many newspaper clippings and articles from the decade and she sent me this one. I have had to scan it through in two parts but it briefly outlines the hijacking (not the complete article I'm afraid) and also shows a picture of N70775 pre its tragic destruction less than  year later. Apologies for the poor quality in advance.