“D.B.Cooper” and the Cooper Vane

By Phil Brooks

I can’t remember when I first heard the story of the November 24, 1971, hijacking of a Northwest Airlines Boeing 727, in which a middle-aged male parachuted from flight 305’s aft airstairs over the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The man wore a business suit and parachute and carried $200,000 in twenty-dollar bills when he jumped. I’ve always been fascinated by it.  

The hijacker extorted the money from Northwest Airlines in exchange for the release of all 36 passengers and two of the three flight attendants. He demanded two parachutes and two reserve parachutes, but only the hijacker jumped out of the aircraft, while it was cruising at 10,000 feet, unpressurized, in the dark, en route from Seattle to Reno, Nevada.

The hijacker has never been found, but some bills (identified by their serial numbers) were found along the Columbia River in rural Washington in 1980.

When I was in junior high school, I bought a 1974 paperback work of fiction called “The Parajacker” by Jeremiah Jack. That was probably when I first became interested in the actual hijacking. The striking color photo of a Braniff 727 on the cover with its airstairs extended sure got my attention!

In 1992, I heard about “D.B. Cooper Days” in Ariel, Washington (located near the route the airplane took, southbound from Seattle), and decided to attend the event that year, held on November 28. The events were held at the Ariel Store and Tavern and featured live music and “Cooper” themed contests.  I use quotes because the name the hijacker gave to the ticket agent (no ID was required then) was Dan Cooper. Through some misreporting, the name made it into the media as “D.B. Cooper”, the name by which the mystery man is known to this day.

I was interviewed that day by the PBS television station in Vancouver, Washington, either because I had traveled the farthest (from Indiana), or I was the only one sober enough to be interviewed!

After its service with Northwest as N467US, serial number 18803 flew for Piedmont (as N838N), and finally with Key Air of Las Vegas, Nevada (as N29KA), where for a time it operated to and from “Area 51” in the Nevada desert.

In April 1994, on a Civil War battlefield tour of the South with two friends, I arranged to visit the aircraft part-out facility at Greenwood, Mississippi airport (GWO).  The “Cooper” aircraft had made its last flight and would eventually be parted out for spares.  

My contact there gave us a tour of the aircraft, and was nice enough to give me a Passenger Service Unit from the cabin (containing air vents and reading lights), along with a device called a “Cooper Vane.”  

The vane, a simple device, is air-activated (like a weather vane) and blocks the aft airstairs from extending in flight, due to the air load on the aircraft. It retracts when the aircraft slows down after landing, and allows the stairs to extend on the ground if needed. Installation on 727s (and Douglas DC-9 and Sud Caravelle aircraft types, which also have aft airstairs) was mandated after the NW305 hijacking. It has no serial number, so it can’t be authenticated, and has minimal value (unless you need a replacement part for your 727), but I treasure it!

The Memphis Group, the parts operation, was willing to sell me the aft airstairs for scrap value (18 cents a pound at that time), but the transportation cost would have been exorbitant, and I couldn’t justify it. But, but I called the Ariel Store and talked to the owner, Dona Elliott, to let her know it was for sale. Nothing had transpired when I returned for “D.B. Cooper Days” in 1996, with Northwest Airlines pilot Dan Gradwohl. We were quoted and pictured in the Los Angeles Times in a subsequent story!

The aircraft was scrapped that same year.

In 1999, I contributed to an article by Mike Machat in Airliners magazine about the crime, and Dan and Sara Gradwohl and I attended “DB Cooper Days” in November 2000.

Time marches on, and the mystery remains: what happened to Cooper?  There were several “copycat” crimes, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation didn’t connect those hijackers to the original event.  I personally doubt that he survived the jump, being at night in the winter, in improper clothes.

I regret that I never flew on the airplane, but I do have a great souvenir and conversation piece!

Sadly, Dona Elliot died in 2015, the last remaining flight deck crew member from Northwest flight 305 that day, William Rataczak, died on October 22, 2025, at the age of 86.

Dan Gradwohl and I will be giving a seminar at Airliners International 2026 in Denver about the hijacking and I’ll have the “Cooper Vane” with me for “Show and Tell.” We hope to see you there.