Two Hijackings In One Day

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31941, 19 March 1969, Page 13

Two Hijackings In One Day

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

HAVANA, March 18,

Two.Jiijacked airliners, one from Peru and the other from the United States, stood side by side on the perimeter of Havana Airport last night while their hijackers exchanged experiences over drinks.

A McDonnell-Douglass DC9 of Delta Airlines, with 60 passengers and a crew of four, had touched down only a few hours after a Boeing 727 of Faucett Airlines, of Peru, had landed. The Peruvian plane hid

been hijacked by six men during a domestic flight with 69 passengers, who were released from the aircraft when it refuelled at Guayaquil, Ecuador.

Four of its hijackers, all young, sat with the lone gunman who had hijacked the Delta jet over Georgia as it was flying from Atlanta to Charleston, South Carolina, when it was hijacked.

Gn.n-faced security guards from the Cuban Ministry of the Interior watched as they ate their meal; food is strictly rationed in Cuba. A few yards away, in another room, the crews of the two planes sat waiting for permission to fly out of Cuba. In a third room, the passengers from the Delta plane sat while Cuban photographers took pictures. The Cubans, and the Americans, working through the Swiss, recently worked out an arrangement for the speedy return of hijacked planes and passengers.