Word: cockpit
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Just about the time I had him rising from his seat on the way to the cockpit, the no smoking - seat belt sign started flashing and a bell chimed. I held my breath as the engine slowed and the pilot came on the P. A. system to announce that we would be landing shortly in Philadelphia, Philadelphia? Who the hell did the pilot think he was landing in Philadelphia? What about the man with the black briefcase? What were the airlines doing making such suggestive announcements when they couldn't deliver the goods? Just another gimmick, I told myself. They...
Okay we're sitting in our cockpit. okay. Now we check all the switches-check all the switches. He flips through the air at the switches. Now we check all our wing flaps-right wing up down, left wing, tail back and forth. Okay everything's pretty all right, just fine. Okay...
Warning Shot. After Flight 85 left Los Angeles, Stewardess Tanya Novacoff saw Minichiello fiddling with something under his seat. "Oh, I'm putting together a fishing rod," he explained. The fishing rod was the carbine, and a few minutes later Stewardess Charlene Delmonico was marching up to the cockpit in front of Minichiello with the weapon in her back. "I mean business," said Minichiello...
Once inside the cockpit, Minichiello held the carbine at the flight engineer's head and ordered Pilot Cook to head for New York. Cook laconically radioed the FAA control center in Oakland: "Rerouting to change to New York on account of hijacking." FBI agents hastened to Kennedy Airport, but in the meantime Cook persuaded the skyjacker to let him put down at Denver to refuel and allow the passengers and three of the four stewardesses to disembark. Fearful of making a dangerous situation worse, ground personnel did not intervene. After the Denver stop, the red and white jet took...
Minichiello wanted the plane to head for Europe. TWA scrambled to find two pilots qualified for the transatlantic run, since Cook and the rest of the Flight 85 cockpit crew were checked out only for domestic flights. Pilots Richard Hastings and Billy Williams, both 24-year veterans at TWA, volunteered to go along. Minichiello allowed them aboard, but suddenly he got jumpy. He fired a warning shot, which ricocheted harmlessly off an emergency oxygen bottle on the cockpit ceiling. Then Minichiello insisted that the jet take off at once. Trailed by a small plane full of FBI men, it flew...