Skyjacking and deterrents

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33479, 9 March 1974, Page 10

Skyjacking and deterrents

An Anatomy of Skyjacking. By Peter C. Clyne. Abelard Schuman. More than half of all skyjacking attempts since 1948 have been successful. During 1972, when 64 skyjackings were attempted, 13 passengers and crew and 22 skyjackers were killed. Clearly some effective measures need to be taken. However, before this, an analysis of the skyjacker himself needs to be made. What is he like and what deterrents will keep him out of the sky, if they are applied? As Mr Clyne sees it there are six kinds of skyjacker. “The Jesse James type who commits the crime for money; the criminal who just wants to get to a particular place; the bluff artist who claims (falsely) that his toy gun is a real one or that he has placed a bomb on the plane, a sort of relatively harmless cousin to Jesse James; ' the lunatic; the political fanatic: and the Angel of Death, dedicated to killing and being killed, who comes somewhere between the lunatic and the fanatic." This being so. deterrents such as imprisonment would stop only soma

skyjacking. Not even the death penalty will stop the lunatic or the political fanatic, and would be an incentive to the Angel of Death, who, Mr Clyne says, actually wants to die. So he presents the only remaining alternative to punishment; security checks. He argues for “ensuring, as far as we can, that weapons or explosives are not brought on to airlines or into airports.” To make this analysis and form his opinions, Mr Clyne, who is a highly qualified lawyer, studied the trials held after two unsuccessful skyjacking attempts. The book is built upon these trials. It describes both them and the skyjacking attempts that failed, in detail. Mr Clyne’s case for a world-wide system of security checks at airports is compelling. His descriptions of skyjacking attempts and trials, and the mysteriously successful skyjacking episode of October, 1972, which ended in the Munich Games terrorists being released in exchange for a Lufthansa jet, are most comprehensive, if even a little drawn out. His argument is worthy of a good hearing. It may well be the solution.