Hijacked: The True Story of the Heroes of Flight 705

by Dave Hirschman

Overview

The incredible true story of three pilots flying a routine Federal Express flight who must call on their inner courage, strength, and ability to stop a bitter, suicidal hijacker from killing them, and thousands of people below.

David Sanders, Jim Tucker, and Andy Peterson had taken off on a regular “out-and-back,” delivering and picking up packages for FedEx’s next-day service. They had one jumpseat passenger, an off-duty colleague who they assumed was simply taking advantage of the FedEx perk allowing virtually all employees to ride the company jets for free. The shock came twenty minutes later.

Before the plane had reached its normal cruising altitude, the lone passenger attacked the pilots with hammers and a spear gun. He’d had his diabolical plan in the works for months: by crashing the plane into the Federal Express Memphis hub, he’d ruin the company, which he felt had treated him unfairly. In a relentless and brutal assault, the passenger struck the pilots again and again.

What he didn’t count on was the skill and teamwork of the pilots. While Sanders and Peterson tried to stop the relentless battering, copilot Tucker swung the aircraft into dangerous flight maneuvers in an attempt to literally knock the man off his feet.

In Hijacked, Dave Hirschman vividly re-creates this hair-raising battle of wills, giving each pilot’s point of view and drawing on his own experiences as a pilot to take us inside that fateful day.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062824288
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/10/2018
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	707,720
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.65(d)

About the Author

Dave Hirschman is an aviation writer for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Assoc-iation. He previously covered FedEx as a business news reporter for the Commercial Appeal and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He teaches aerobatic flying and lives in Frederick, Maryland, with his wife, Martha; his daughter, Kara; and his son, Nathan.

Editorial Reviews

On April 7, 1994, the crew of a Federal Express DC-10 spent a little over half an hour fighting back a disgruntled employee's attempt to take control of and crash the aircraft. One of the crew suffered injuries that required extensive physical and mental rehabilitation. The assailant, flight engineer Auburn Calloway, was convicted in federal court and sentenced to life in prison. Some minor drama aside, that's the whole story, and it fails to sustain an entire book. Hirschman, a reporter for the Memphis Commercial Appeal, followed this story closely for its duration. He only highlights the paucity of material and tension through his attempts to inflate the drama with needlessly hyperbolic detail, background on even the most insignificant players and lengthy descriptions of the pilots' hospital stays: "Susan... spoke softly, but her clipped, authoritative tone left no room for misinterpretation. `I don't want anyone who's not a doctor or a nurse visiting Andy today,' she instructed." The technical details of the fateful flight are explained clearly and expertly (the author is a pilot), and the brief action sequence is exciting and well drawn, but those expecting the high-flying thrills implied by the title may be disappointed. (July)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The gripping record of a "routine" Federal Express fast- freight flight between Memphis and San Jose in April 1994 that went horribly wrong.

There were three crewmen on the DC-10 that night: David Sanders, the captain, a cool, 49-year-old pilot from west Texas; Jim Tucker, the copilot, a tall, powerful athlete; and Andy Anderson, a flight engineer from Mississippi. They had one passenger, Auburn Calloway, also a FedEx pilot, and a man with serious problems. An African-American, Calloway believed that he had been the object of racist harassment in the navy and at FedEx. The divorced Calloway, a karate expert, suspected that he was about to be fired and would thus be unable to provide for his two children. He drafted a will and, acting coolly and with caution, managed to hide hammers, a speargun, and a knife on the plane. He intended to kill the crew and crash the plane into a residential area, believing that the crash would be treated as an accident. Striking swiftly, he managed to assault Tucker and Anderson, fracturing their skulls. But they didn't lose consciousness and began fighting back. Tucker put the plane through a series of dizzying maneuvers, tossing the rest of the crew and Calloway about the cabin, causing Calloway to drop the speargun with which he had been attempting to kill Sanders. Hirschman, a reporter for the Memphis Commercial Appeal, provides a moment-by-moment reconstruction of the crew's long, bloody battle with Calloway. Bleeding, disoriented, weakening quickly, Tucker and Anderson nonetheless managed to restrain their assailant. Sanders, in great pain (Calloway had almost severed one of his ears in the initial attack) miraculously brought the plane into Memphis for a safe landing. Hirschman provides a summary of Calloway's trial. Convicted, he was sentenced to life in prison.

A moving portrait of three quiet heroes.

Kirkus Reviews