Bloodless

1

Wednesday, November 24, 1971

Flo Schaffner was not at all happy with the new uniform that Northwest Orient Airlines had imposed on stewardesses, especially the dumb cap with a bill and earflaps that made her look like Donald Duck. Nevertheless, she stood at the door of Flight 305 — Portland to Seattle — with a bright smile, greeting arriving passengers and checking their tickets. She was not displeased at the relatively small number of passengers on the flight; she’d thought it would be full, this being the day before Thanksgiving. But today only about a third of the main cabin was occupied, which in her experience meant a stress-free flight.

As people began to settle into their seats, she and the other stewardess, Tina Mucklow, began moving from opposite ends of the main cabin, taking drink orders. Schaffner took the rear. One of her first customers was in seat 18C of the Boeing 727: a polite, soft-spoken gentleman of early middle age, wearing a raincoat, a gray business suit, a white shirt, and a black tie. She knew his name; one of her responsibilities in checking tickets was to try to memorize the names of all the passengers and their seat assignments. It was usually impossible, but with the plane as empty as it was, today she had managed it.

“Can I get you anything to drink, Mr. Cooper?”

He politely asked her for a bourbon and Seven. When she brought it, he handed her a twenty.

“Anything smaller?”

“Nope.”

She told him he’d have to wait until later for her to get him change.

The pilot, William Scott, whom everyone called Scotty, announced over the intercom for the stewardesses to secure the exits and prepare for takeoff. Schaffner raised the aft stairway and then settled in a jump seat next to it, not far from the passenger in 18C. The flight took off precisely on time, at 2:50 PM, for the thirty-minute hop to Seattle.

As the plane was leveling out and the seat belt signs were turned off, the passenger in 18C signaled to her. She came over, assuming he wanted another drink, but instead he placed an envelope in her hand. This was something that often happened to Schaffner: a lonely traveler writing her a note asking to meet for a drink, dinner, or something more. She had learned that the best way to handle such approaches was simply not to engage. She thanked the passenger warmly and slipped the envelope into her pocket, unread.

The man leaned toward her with a friendly smile and whispered, “Miss, you’d better look at that note. I have a bomb.”

Schaffner wasn’t sure she had heard him correctly. She removed the envelope and took out the note. It was printed in felt-tipped pen in precise capital letters, and it did indeed say he had a bomb, and that as long as everyone cooperated nothing bad would happen.

“Please sit down next to me,” he said, taking the note back from her and putting it in his shirt pocket. She did as told, and he unlatched the briefcase in his lap and lifted the lid a few inches. Inside, she could see a bundle of red cylinders with wires attached, nestled next to a large battery.

He shut the briefcase and put on a pair of dark glasses. “Take this down.”

Taking out her pen, she wrote down a series of instructions.

“Relay that to the cockpit,” he said.

Schaffner rose, walked down the aisle, and went into the cockpit. Closing the door behind her, she told the pilot the plane was being hijacked by a man with a bomb. Then, reading from the envelope, she recited the list of his demands.

“Does he really have a bomb?” Scotty asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “I saw it. It looked real.”

“Oh, boy.” Scotty called Northwest Orient flight operations in Minnesota. His words were summarized in a teletype.

The hijacker also requested that a fuel truck be waiting on the tarmac at Sea-Tac airport, to refuel the plane for a new journey to be specified later. And he demanded that a flight engineer board the plane for the next leg of the journey.

He didn’t say why.