It was dark. It was raining. It was the kind of night where you’d rather be anywhere else than stuck in a metal tube 30,000 feet above the Pacific Northwest. But for the 36 passengers on Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, that night became the backdrop for the most enduring mystery in American aviation history. People always ask, when did DB Cooper hijack the plane, and the answer is November 24, 1971.
That was Thanksgiving Eve.
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Imagine the scene at Portland International Airport. A man calling himself Dan Cooper—the "DB" moniker was actually a media mistake later on—walks up to the counter. He buys a one-way ticket to Seattle. It cost him $20. He wasn't wearing a tactical suit or a mask. He had on a dark suit, a white shirt, a black clip-on tie, and a mother-of-pearl tie wrap. He looked like any other businessman heading home for the holidays. He sat in seat 18C, ordered a bourbon and soda, and lit a cigarette.
The exact moment the world changed
The flight took off at 4:35 PM. Shortly after, Cooper handed a note to Florence Schaffner, a flight attendant. She was used to businessmen giving her their phone numbers, so she just dropped it in her purse without looking. Cooper leaned in. He told her she better look at the note. He had a bomb.
He wasn't joking.
When Schaffner opened the note, she saw neat, all-caps handwriting. It told her he had a bomb in his briefcase and wanted her to sit next to him. When she sat down, he cracked the briefcase open just enough for her to see a mass of wires and red sticks. He wanted $200,000 in "negotiable American currency" and four parachutes. He also wanted a fuel truck standing by in Seattle to refuel the plane.
The tense standoff on the tarmac
The plane circled for about two hours. While the passengers were told there was a "minor mechanical difficulty," the FBI and local police were scrambling to get the cash and the parachutes together. They managed it. At 5:39 PM, the plane landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Cooper let the passengers and two flight attendants go in exchange for the money and the gear.
He kept a few crew members behind: pilots William Scott and Bob Rataczak, flight engineer Harold Anderson, and flight attendant Tina Mucklow.
Cooper had specific instructions for the next leg of the trip. He wanted to go to Mexico City. But he didn't want to fly high or fast. He told the pilots to stay under 10,000 feet and keep the airspeed below 150 knots. He even told them how to set the wing flaps. The man knew planes. Honestly, he probably knew them better than some of the people chasing him.
Jumping into the abyss: When did DB Cooper hijack the plane and disappear?
At 7:40 PM, the Boeing 727 took off again. Two F-106 fighter jets followed from McChord Air Force Base, but because Cooper insisted on flying so slow, the jets had a hard time staying behind him without stalling.
Somewhere around 8:00 PM, a warning light flashed in the cockpit. The aft airstairs had been lowered.
The pilot asked over the intercom if Cooper needed help.
"No," Cooper replied.
That was the last time anyone heard from him. At approximately 8:13 PM, the tail of the aircraft suddenly lurched upward. The crew felt the pressure change. Cooper had jumped. He went out into a freezing rainstorm, over the rugged terrain of Southwest Washington, carrying 21 pounds of twenty-dollar bills and wearing nothing but a suit and a raincoat.
Why the 1971 date matters so much
The timing—November 24, 1971—is critical because of the weather. It wasn't just "rainy." It was a brutal storm with visibility near zero. If you've ever been in the woods near the Columbia River in late November, you know it’s a death trap for someone without gear. Cooper didn't have a coat. He didn't have hiking boots. He had a parachute that he couldn't even steer.
The search that followed was massive. It was called Operation NORJAK. The FBI flooded the area around Lake Merwin and the Lewis River. They used helicopters, high-tech sensors, and even a submarine to check the bottom of the lake. They found nothing. No parachute. No briefcase. No body.
The 1980 breakthrough that changed everything
For years, people thought the whole thing was a myth. Then, in February 1980, an eight-year-old boy named Brian Ingram was vacationing with his family at Tina Bar on the Columbia River. He was digging in the sand to make a fire pit when he found three bundles of cash.
It was $5,800. The rubber bands were still intact, though they crumbled when touched. The serial numbers matched the ransom money given to Cooper.
This find didn't solve the case; it just made it weirder. The money was found downstream from where experts thought Cooper jumped. Geologists like Leonard Palmer looked at the silt layers and concluded the money arrived there years after the jump. This led to a million theories. Did Cooper lose the money in the air? Did he bury it? Did someone else find it and move it?
Who was he? The suspects that haunt the FBI
The FBI looked at over 800 suspects. Most were dead ends. But a few names always bubble to the top of the list because they fit the profile of a guy who knew his way around a 727.
- Richard McCoy Jr.: He actually pulled off a nearly identical hijacking less than five months after Cooper. He jumped over Utah and survived, but he was caught and later killed in a shootout with the FBI. The FBI officially ruled him out for the 1971 job because his physical description didn't match what the flight attendants saw.
- Sheridan Peterson: A former paratrooper and smokejumper who worked for Boeing. He had the skills. He looked like the sketch. When the FBI asked him where he was on the night of the hijacking, he was "kinda" vague about it.
- Robert Rackstraw: A former Army pilot with specialized paratrooper training. He had a complex personality and a history of legal trouble. He basically spent the rest of his life teasing researchers, never fully denying he was Cooper but never admitting it either.
The FBI officially closed the case in 2016. They decided their resources were better spent elsewhere. But that hasn't stopped the "citizen sleuths." People like Eric Ulis and the team at "CooperCon" spend their own money testing the clip-on tie Cooper left behind. They found traces of titanium and rare earth elements on the tie, suggesting Cooper might have worked in a high-tech manufacturing facility or a chemical plant.
The legacy of Flight 305
You can't talk about Cooper without talking about how he changed travel. Before 1971, you could basically walk onto a plane like you were getting on a bus. Security was a joke. After Cooper, the FAA mandated the "Cooper Vane." It’s a tiny mechanical latch that prevents the aft stairs from being opened while the plane is in flight.
If you look at a Boeing 727 today, you’ll see that little piece of metal. It’s a permanent reminder of a man who vanished into thin air.
The case of DB Cooper remains the only unsolved skyjacking in US history. It's a story about a guy who took on the system and, for all we know, won. Or, more likely, he's a skeleton wearing a rotted suit somewhere in the thick brush of Washington state.
How to dive deeper into the mystery
If you are obsessed with the timeline of when did DB Cooper hijack the plane, your best bet for real, unvarnished facts is to look at the FBI’s FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) vault. They have released thousands of pages of original investigative notes.
Alternatively, you can visit the Washington State Historical Society. They often house artifacts related to the search and the 1980 money find. For those who want to see the location, Tina Bar is still accessible, though much of the shoreline has changed due to dredging and natural erosion over the last fifty years.
The mystery doesn't have a clean ending. It has a suit tie, a few bundles of soggy cash, and a legend that gets bigger every November.
To get the most out of your own research into this cold case, follow these steps:
- Review the Flight Path: Look at the "Victor 23" flight path. It shows exactly where the plane was when the pressure bump occurred.
- Analyze the Tie Samples: Research the 2011-2017 McCrone Associates reports. They detail the microscopic particles found on Cooper's tie, which provide the best clues about his profession.
- Check the Serial Numbers: While it's unlikely, the FBI still has the list of ransom money serial numbers public. People still check their old twenty-dollar bills against this database just in case.