Long before TSA lines and shoe removal, American skies lived through the *Golden Age of Hijacking*. Between 1968 and 1972, more than 130 airliners were commandeered — and one bored ex–Navy airplane electrician from Detroit decided he could turn that chaos into his big score.
Part 1 traces how Martin J. McNally became obsessed with D.B. Cooper, studied parachutes in the library, and convinced himself he could hijack a jet, get rich, and vanish. Under the fake name “Robert Wilson,” he boards *American Airlines Flight 119* with a sawed-off rifle hidden in a briefcase and turns a short hop from St. Louis to Tulsa into an 11-hour hostage crisis watched across the country.
As passengers slide down emergency chutes, FBI agents actually climb aboard to teach a hijacker how to wear his parachute, and a furious businessman floors his Cadillac straight into a taxiing 727, Bailey and Chelsea pull apart the psychology and sociology of a time when hijacking felt almost… normal. Part 1 ends in the dead of night, with McNally hanging off the rear stairs of a Boeing 727 at 300 miles an hour, a half-million dollars tied to his waist — and a jump that won’t go the way he planned.
Go to: American Skyjacker for more information.
