The Cold Truth About the Hijacking of Flight 305
We’ve all had days where everything seems to go wrong. You wake up late, can’t find your keys, spill coffee on your shirt, and get stuck in traffic. But most of us don’t have $200,000 riding on a successful outcome. Such was the case for D.B. Cooper, who hijacked a plane in 1971 and parachuted into heavy rain and a raging snowstorm wearing only a trench coat and loafers.
Since then, there has been no trace of him. Some believe that Cooper died from hypothermia, but others think that he might have survived and is living under an assumed name. There is no way to know for sure what happened to D.B. Cooper, but one thing is certain: the weather was terrible that night.
Could knowing the weather have helped Cooper?
It isn’t clear whether Cooper knew the weather at the time he hijacked a plane, but it is certainly possible that his actions could have been avoided. If Cooper had opted to check the weather before jumping, he would have had a much better chance of survival. Perhaps he could have waited an extra hour to make the jump and survived.
If he didn’t die from hypothermia, the weather could have played a critical role in Cooper’s escape. The stormy weather made it difficult for authorities to figure out where he may have landed, and Cooper had no way to…
