D. B. Cooper is a media epithet for an unidentified man who hijacked Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, a Boeing 727 aircraft, in United States airspace on November 24, 1971. During the flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington, the hijacker told a flight attendant he was armed with a bomb, demanded $200,000 in ransom and requested four parachutes upon landing in Seattle. After releasing the passengers in Seattle, the hijacker instructed the flight crew to refuel the aircraft and begin a second flight to Mexico City, with a refueling stop in Reno, Nevada. About 30 minutes after taking off from Seattle, the hijacker opened the aircraft's aft door, deployed the staircase, and parachuted into the night over southwestern Washington. The hijacker has never been found or conclusively identified.
A parachute is a device used to slow the motion of an object through an atmosphere by creating drag or, in a ram-air parachute, aerodynamic lift. A major application is to support people, for recreation or as a safety device for aviators, who can exit from an aircraft at height and descend safely to earth.
High-altitude military parachuting, or military free fall (MFF), is a method of delivering military personnel, military equipment, and other military supplies from a transport aircraft at a high altitude via free-fall parachute insertion. Two techniques are used: HALO and HAHO.
Wingsuit flying is the sport of skydiving using a webbing-sleeved jumpsuit called a wingsuit to add webbed area to the diver's body and generate increased lift, which allows extended air time by gliding flight rather than just free falling. The modern wingsuit, first developed in the late 1990s, uses a pair of fabric membranes stretched flat between the arms and flanks/thighs to imitate an airfoil, and often also between the legs to function as a tail and allow some aerial steering.
Wesley Trent Snipes is an American actor. Snipes has starred in numerous action-adventures, thrillers, and dramatic feature films such as New Jack City (1991), Jungle Fever (1991), Passenger 57 (1992), Rising Sun (1993), Demolition Man (1993), Drop Zone (1994), U.S. Marshals (1998), The Expendables 3 (2014), and the Blade film trilogy (1998–2004), in the title role. He also starred in such successful comedies as Major League (1989), White Men Can't Jump (1992), To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995), and Coming 2 America (2021). In television, he appeared on The Player (2015). Snipes was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male for his work in The Waterdance (1992) and won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor for his performance in the film One Night Stand (1997).
The Skydivers is a 1963 American crime film produced by Anthony Cardoza, and written and directed by Coleman Francis. It stars actress Kevin Casey, Eric Tomlin, Cardoza and Marcia Knight, with a performance by influential guitarist Jimmy Bryant.
Passenger 57 is a 1992 American action thriller film directed by Kevin Hooks. The film stars Wesley Snipes and Bruce Payne, with Snipes portraying a security consultant who finds himself forced to foil a plot to free a captive terrorist during a commercial airline flight. Critical reviews were mixed, but the film was a box-office success, and made Snipes a popular action hero icon.
Terminal Velocity is a 1994 American action film directed by Deran Sarafian, written by David Twohy, and starring Charlie Sheen, Nastassja Kinski, James Gandolfini, and Christopher McDonald. It follows a daredevil skydiver (Sheen) who is caught up in a criminal plot by Russian mobsters, forcing him to team up with a freelance secret agent (Kinski) in order to survive. It was one of two skydiving-themed action films released in the fourth quarter of 1994, and received mostly negative reviews from critics.
Freestyle skydiving is a competitive skydiving discipline where one member of a two-person team performs acrobatic manoeuvres in free fall while the other one films the performance from a close distance using a helmet-mounted camera.
Felix Baumgartner is an Austrian skydiver, daredevil and BASE jumper. He is widely known for jumping to Earth from a helium balloon from the stratosphere on 14 October 2012 and landing in New Mexico, United States, as part of the Red Bull Stratos project. Doing so, he set world records for skydiving an estimated 39 km (24 mi), reaching an estimated top speed of 1,357.64 km/h (843.6 mph), or Mach 1.25. He became the first person to break the sound barrier relative to the surface without vehicular power on his descent. He broke skydiving records for exit altitude, vertical freefall distance without a drogue parachute, and vertical speed without a drogue. Though he still holds the two latter records, the first was broken two years later, when on 24 October 2014, Alan Eustace jumped from 135,890 feet with a drogue.
Roger Warren Nelson was a skydiver, convicted drug smuggler, and founder of Skydive Chicago, one of the largest skydiving centers in the United States.
Skydive Hibaldstow is a parachuting and skydiving drop zone centre in Hibaldstow, North Lincolnshire, England. Skydive Hibaldstow is affiliated with the skydiving company British Skydiving.
Cutaway is a 2000 American action television film about skydiving, co-written and directed by Guy Manos. The term "cut-away" is used frequently in the film, in reference to parachuting and also in reference to life in general. Cutaway stars Tom Berenger, Stephen Baldwin, Dennis Rodman, Maxine Bahns, Ron Silver, Casper Van Dien and Thomas Ian Nicholas. This was Rodman's third film. It aired on the USA Network on October 3, 2000.
Parachuting and skydiving is a method of transiting from a high point in an atmosphere to the ground or ocean surface with the aid of gravity, involving the control of speed during the descent using a parachute or parachutes.
Guy Manos is a former world champion skydiver and multiple world record holder, as well as a screenwriter, film director, and stuntman. He is a graduate of the University of Miami Film School.
Skydive Empuriabrava is the brand that has been commercially operating Empuriabrava Aerodrome since 1985. Since it began operating its main activity has been skydiving although it also offers photo flights, aerial and tourist advertising, and runs a school of aviation for private pilots.
Mother City SkyDiving - Cape Town is a sports skydiving drop zone licensed by the Parachute Association of South Africa (PASA) and the South African Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
Jeff "Jeffro" Provenzano is an American professional skydiver, wingsuit flyer, BASE jumper, HALO jumper and stuntman. He is a member of the Red Bull Air Force, and is considered to be a pioneer of the skydiving discipline of swooping.
Samuel DeWitt "Sam" Hennings is an American actor, best known for his roles in Memphis Beat,Four Good Days, Supernatural, and his starring role in The Work and the Glory trilogy.
The apparent success and instant notoriety of the hijacker known as D. B. Cooper in November 1971 resulted in over a dozen copycat hijackings within the next year all using a similar template to that established by Cooper. Like Cooper, the plan would be to hijack an aircraft, demand a ransom, and then parachute from that aircraft as a method of escape. To combat this wave of extortion hijackings, aircraft were fitted with eponymous "Cooper Vanes," specifically designed to prevent the aft staircase from being lowered in-flight. The Cooper Vane, as well as the widespread implementation of other safety measures such as the installation of metal detectors throughout American airports, would spell the end of the Cooper copycats.
