D. B. Cooper

Dan Cooper, best known as D. B. Cooper, was the alias of an unidentified man who hijacked Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, a Boeing 727 aircraft flying from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington, on November 24, 1971. Cooper told the flight crew he had a bomb and demanded $200,000 in ransom (equivalent to $1,600,000 in 2025) and four parachutes upon landing in Seattle. After releasing the passengers in Seattle, Cooper directed the crew to refuel the aircraft and begin a second flight to Mexico City, with a refueling stop in Reno, Nevada. After taking off from Seattle, Cooper opened the aircraft's aft door, deployed the airstair, and parachuted to an uncertain fate over a remote, heavily wooded area of Southwest Washington. Because of a reporter's error, the aircraft hijacker became known as D. B. Cooper; the hijacker's true identity and fate remain unknown.

In 1980, a small portion of the ransom money ($5,800) was found along the riverbanks of the Columbia River near Vancouver, Washington. The discovery of the money renewed public interest in the crime but yielded no additional information, and the remaining money was never recovered. For forty-five years after the hijacking, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) maintained an active investigation and built an extensive case file but did not reach any definitive conclusions about Cooper's identity. The FBI officially suspended active investigation of the case in 2016, although journalists, professional investigators, and amateur sleuths continue to pursue numerous theories for Cooper's identity and ultimate fate.

Cooper's hijacking—and several imitators (known as the D. B. Cooper copycat hijackings) in the year after—prompted immediate and major upgrades to security measures for airports and commercial aviation. Metal detectors were installed at airports, baggage inspection became mandatory, and passengers who paid cash for tickets on the day of departure were selected for additional scrutiny. The Cooper hijacking remains the only documented unsolved case of air piracy in the history of commercial aviation.