The Hard New Line

One of the most dismaying consequences of the spectacular manic act is that it breeds more mania. The current case in point is skyjacking, which has seemed to proceed this year at an almost exponential rate (see box, next page). Last week's dismaying tally: four major attempts, three within the U.S., all involving U.S. commercial aircraft.

> One hour out of Saigon, Nguyen Thai-Binh, 24, a South Vietnamese returning home from studies at the University of Washington, took command of a Pan American 747 jumbojet and ordered the pilot to fly him to Hanoi. Thai-Binh's U.S. Government scholarship had been canceled at the Thieu regime's request, possibly because of Thai-Binh's antiwar activities. The pilot, Gene Vaughn, 53, flew into Saigon anyway, and Thai-Binh sent him a second order written in blood--apparently his own. It got him nowhere; he was shot dead by a vacationing American cop.

>In Buffalo, a local man, Charles Smith, 23, held his 18-month-old daughter hostage at knifepoint in an attempt to hijack an American Airlines 707 at Greater Buffalo International airport. He had previously stabbed his estranged wife and her boy friend, neither fatally, before FBI agents, relatives and ministers talked him into surrendering.

> Two Bulgarian refugees, Dimitr Alexiev and Michael Azmanoff, both 28, boarded a Pacific Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 in Sacramento. They demanded that $800,000 be delivered to them at San Francisco International airport and ordered the pilot to point a course for Siberia. The plane taxied to the isolated tip of Runway 19R, where it was finally stormed by FBI agents disguised as crewmen. The agents gunned down both hijackers, but during the Shootout, one passenger, E.H. Stanley Carter, 66, of Montreal, was also killed and two others were wounded.

> Just 26 hours later, a Viet Nam veteran with a grudge against the Army for not permitting him to marry his Asian girl friend boarded another PSA plane in Oakland with his own quick-money scheme. Francis Goodell, 21, AWOL from Fort Riley, Kans., demanded $455,000, a parachute and handcuffs from the airline. Airline officials managed to gather the funds and equipment at the San Diego airport. On the return trip to Oakland, Goodell was talked out of his adventure by his lone hostage, Captain Lloyd Turner of the California Highway Patrol.

PSA has been spectacularly vulnerable to skyjackers: four of its planes have been commandeered this year. In April, the airline was fined $1,000 by the Federal Aviation Administration for inadequate protective measures. While a few carriers such as Eastern, TWA and American are making serious attempts to maintain effective surveillance and deterrent devices, others are deliberately dogging it to try and force the Federal Government into picking up the tab for airline security (e.g., magnetometers, sky marshals, X-ray equipment). FAA officials and the pilots are becoming more fed up by the day. Said Captain Al Bonner, vice president of the Air Line Pilots Association, which recently called a 24-hour protest strike: "The public, we feel, should stand up with us by refusing to fly on airlines that continue to put economic gain before the security of their passengers. Safety costs money, and some are apparently not willing to spend it."

More Inclined. Nor is the Federal Government willing to brook any more hijacking attempts. Presidential Assistant John Ehrlichman announced that the President had instructed FAA Administrator John Shaffer to order all commuter airlines to institute much more drastic passenger inspection procedures. Said Ehrlichman: "When someone is able to take a submachine gun aboard a plane you wonder about compliance with the inspection rules." The rules require magnetometers at the gate and a search by marshals of suspicious-looking passengers.

Shaffer sounded his own get-tough note. "There has been a definite shift in policy," he said. "We are not going to pre-empt the captains' command over their aircraft. But we will assess each situation--and we are going to respond, every time." That undoubtedly means that federal authorities are now more inclined to shoot a skyjacker than to let him go where he wants.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.