Aircraft Hijacking: Threat In Air

'The hijackers proceed to threaten the stewardess and demand the plane is diverted to Vienna. The passengers were scared to death"
What does this scenario remind you of?  Yeah, you guessed right. It is talking about an airplane hijack. (Have you watched Passenger 57?)
In very technical terms                                  Hijacking, is, the illegal seizure of a land vehicle, aircraft, or other conveyance while it is in transit. It is done for various reasons which range from political agenda to international conflict.

Did you know that pilots are supposed to follow a fixed set of instructions in case of a hijack?

The first thing that the pilots are supposed to do is to press '7500' ln the transponder. This alerts the Air traffic Control (ATC) and sends to them a danger signal. 

The code will give a special indication and the aircraft blip will appear as a sunburst on the ATC radar screens.

In most of the cases the aircraft is instructed to be diverted to the nearest airport and rest of traffic is put on hold.

The cockpit door is locked and no entry is allowed in the cockpit. Both pilots and crew also have codes to communicate the threat but this is kept secret and differs from airline to airline.

India has witnessed around six hijacks since 1947, the last major one occurring in 1999 when Indian Airlines Flight IC-814 from Kathmandu was commandeered by militants and diverted to Kandahar, Afghanistan.

We will now be discussing some of the most famous hijacks!

What a Clueless Hijacking!
One of the earliest hijackings on record occurred on September 25, 1932. It happened when three men commandeered a plane and  a hostage from an airport hangar in Brazil, took off, despite the fact that none of the hijackers, nor the hostage knew how to fly a  plane (Are hijackers so clueless and unplanned?)
They crashed the plane in Sao Joao de Meriti, killing all on board.
Longest Hijacking- 

One of the longest hijackings on record took place in December 1999 (And that too in India?)
An Indian Airline flight was hijacked by a terror group based in Pakistan. The group held the plane for seven days, flying it from Amritsar to Lahore to Dubai to Kandahar. The hijackers released 27 of 176 passengers in Dubai. One passenger was stabbed to death. The incident ended after India agreed to release three militants – Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, and Maulana Masood Azhar. The three have since been implicated in other terrorist actions, such as the 2002 kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl and the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. The hijacking has been seen as one of the millennium attack plots in late December 1999 and early January 2000 (Plane landed in Amritsar, Lahore, and even Dubai for refueling, still was successful!)
On 10 July 2020, one of the accused, Abdul Latif Adam Momin, along with 18 other persons including an employee of the passport office, was acquitted by a Sessions Court in Mumbai of charges relating to the fabrication of passports in connection with the hijacking incident.

The most Serious Hijacking- 

One of the most tragic  hijackings occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, when four airplanes were hijacked by terrorists and flown into the World Trade Centers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania (4 planes hijacked together?)
On that day, nearly 3,000 people were killed when American Airlines Flight 11, American Airlines Flight 77, United Airlines Flight 93, and United Airlines Flight 175 were commandeered by terrorists.

In 2016, India passed a tough anti-hijacking law that prescribes the death penalty for hijackers.

Also according to recent statistics, Airplane hijacking has now become rare! (Good for you)