3 days ago
World's first plane hijacking: A 20-minute flight that took off from Macau but never reached..., it was hijacked by...
World's first plane hijacking: A 20-minute flight that took off from Macau but never reached..., it was hijacked by...
The event that changed the history of aviation, started with a seaplane being taken over by 'air pirates.' Let's take a look at what the Hong Kong mail called 'unparalleled in the history of aviation.'
Flights, at that time were only for the rich. With a 'cigarette flight' between Macau and Hong Kong suddenly crashing, and the sole survivor telling different tales and acting suspicious led authorities to dig deeper within what actually happened.
Were there pirates in the air?
On July 16, 1948, the plane 'Miss Macao,' took off from Macau with 27 people on board, but 4 of them had no intention of going to Hong Kong. The survivor, Wong Yu, a 24 year-old rice farmer, along with his three fellow mates bought the plane tickets by selling everything they owned, tried to grab control of the airplane from the pilot. One of them learned how to fly a plane as the men thought the proceeds from the crime could get them rich.
According to historians, the lead hijacker wanted to gain control of the flight once he subdued the pilots, but things went unexpectedly wrong!
The hijackers did not expect the pilots to resist, which led them shooting both of them, sending the captain's body on the plane's joystick and it plummeting into the South China Sea.
How did the police get to know?
The plane's wreckage proved everything the survivor told was false. But after seeing Wong's poor physical and mental condition, the police could not resort to harsh conditions.
What they did instead was clever, undercover cops in the form of patients went to Wong, and befriended him, which led to him eventually admitting everything to them.
He confessed that the plan was all about gaining the plane's control, stealing valuables and holding the people for ransom, death was not a part of the plan.
The 'air pirates,' tied their guns to their socks and escaped the bare minimum security checks at the time.
How 'skyjacking' evolved?
After this event storming newspapers, people got more ideas and this became extremely common. With the boom of the aviation industry, there was a boom in the number of skyjackings as well. It started from stealing and ransom, and got to a point where hijackers' killed people and crashed planes for political reasons. From 1968 to 1972, airlines went through the 'golden age of hijacking,' with one happening every five and a half days, and costed the industry $219,221 per passenger.
This recklessness brought strict action, with airports becoming miniature police states and strict security procedures being implemented, the numbers greatly reduced, so much that there is a negligible chance of a plane getting hijacked nowadays.
What happened on the Miss Macao was not a singular story, but the first of many aviation incidents that transformed air travel. Before 'the golden age of hijacking' or the September 11, 2001 attacks, one nearly forgotten seaplane set a new age of aviation into motion.
