The hijacking of flight #305, on November 24, 1971, remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in commercial aviation. On the day before Thanksgiving, a man approached the ticket counter for Northwest Orient Airlines at Portland International Airport and purchased a one-way ticket to Seattle; a thirty-minute flight. The man gave his name as Dan Cooper. A subsequent mistake in reporting changed the name to D.B. Cooper and that is the name that has gone into legend.

Shortly after takeoff, Cooper passed a note to one of the flight crew indicating that he had a bomb in his briefcase. He demanded two-hundred-thousand dollars and several parachutes. After landing in Seattle, the cash and parachutes were brought on board, and the passengers and two crew members were allowed to disembark.

The plane took off with a destination (which was provided by Cooper) of Mexico City, with a stop in Reno, Nevada to refuel. However, sometime after takeoff, Cooper told all of the remaining flight crew to remain in the cockpit with the door closed. Alone in the passenger compartment of the Boeing 727, Cooper lowered the airstair in the rear of the plane and jumped.

Theories abound as to what happened to the man known as D.B. Cooper. In February of 1980, about five-thousand dollars of the ransom money was found buried alongside the Columbia River. The money was badly degraded, but the serial numbers were still visible and positively identified the twenty-dollar bills as being part of the money that disappeared with Cooper. None of the rest of the money was ever found in circulation.

The FBI suspended its official investigation on July 8, 2016.

Below is the original CBS evening news broadcast from November 25, 1971, with Walter Cronkite reporting on the hijacking.