S.O.S.

Pilots called it S.O.S.--for suspension of service--and their 24-hour strike to dramatize demands for more forceful measures against hijackings brought air travel to a temporary halt in more than 30 countries last week. In Europe, the strike was 75% effective. Swissair pilots, legally barred from taking part, were given permission by a cooperative airline management to join the protest. Rome's Leonardo da Vinci Airport, ordinarily uncontrolled bedlam, looked almost like a normal air terminal with 91 of 131 scheduled flights canceled.

Still, the walkout was not a total success. Japan, Australia and most Communist countries did not participate. Arab nations ignored the demonstration as "political." In the U.S., where the airlines obtained a last-minute court injunction against the strike, only a few pilots defied the order. The lack of American cooperation especially angered pilots on foreign carriers. "What really enraged us," said a member of the West German Pilots' Association, "was seeing Pan Am come and go chock-full of passengers."

Nonetheless, the protest stirred the U.N. Security Council to adopt a unanimous declaration calling for governments to take effective measures against hijackers. The declaration stopped short of proposing sanctions or mandatory extradition of hijackers, as demanded by the pilots. The U.S. has come out for neither action, favoring instead appropriate trial and penalty within local laws. In Montreal, however, the International Civil Aviation Organization, a specialized U.N. agency, directed its legal committee to draft a convention permitting sanctions against nations that shelter or fail to punish hijackers.

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