He Was Shot, His Copilot Was Dead, He Pulled Off A Miracle | Eastern Air Shuttle 1320

Join My Discord: https://discord.gg/kQggurk This is the story of Eastern Air Lines Shuttle Flight 1320. In the grand scheme of things aviation has only been with us for a short amount of time but in that time the industry has changed so much. Ill be watching a movie from the late 90s or early 2000s to see people still buying tickets at a physical counter and that seems like its from another reality. But before that in the 70s you had something that was even more informal, They were known as shuttles, people could board them sit wherever they wanted and even pay for the flight on board. It left on the hour every hour on most busy routes atleast and if your plane filled up then the airline would roll out a secondary plane so you were guaranteed a seat. People like high level corporate employees, lawyers, bankers , politicians, diplomats and even some professors loved this service. It was really like a bus in the air. You came, you got on and you got to your destination. All of this context is needed to make sense of what happened on the 17th of march 1970 because from a modern frame of reference none of this makes sense. On that day two pilots Caprtain Robert wilbur Jr and first officer James hartley brought their eastern airlines DC9 to the gate at Newark Liberty international airport to board for a quick flight to Logan International in boston. The plane had 68 passengers onboard and 5 crew members on board. The captain was an ex airforce pilot who had just been promoted to the rank of captain just 6 months ago. Between him and his first officer they were more than qualified to fly this quick hop. With all the formalities done the two lined the plane up with the runway and pushed the throttles forward the nimble Dc 9 lifted off into the skies of new jerse, the pilots pointed the nose towards boston and the passengers settled in for a the flight. The flight attendant, at this point started to collect the fare for this flight from each passenger and that came out to $21 or to about $181.30 in todays dollars. Not bad at all for a last minute flight that you just walked onto. The flight was normal, some people read some people smoked and some people slept. The pilots now getting close to boston started the approach into the boston area. At this point one of the flight attendants went to ask a man for his fare. He was described as a young thin guy with thick sideburn and shaggy hair. He stood out from the rest of the people on the plane who were dressed very well. One of the other passengers would muse that he looked like a hippie. Sandy ____ moved to the back of the plane and she smiled at the main asked for his $21 fare the man handed her some money. It was only $16, she said theres not enough here sir. He then reached under his seat to retrieve a camera bag and from the bag he produced a .38 revolver and just said dont get excited i want to see the captain. the flight attendant had no option but to oblige him. He hid his gun under his jacket while still holding onto it. The other passengers were perplexed at this point the jet was on final into boston and here was some random person heading into the cockpit. The pair stopped next to the cockpit door and sandy picked up the phone and whispered captain there is a man outside with a gun who wants to see you. After haning the intercom up she told the man that the pilots were getting ready to land and that he could not see them right now. The man was adamant he wanted to see the captain. Captain wilbur relented and told her to bring him in. Captain wilbur calmly asked the man what do you want, the man erratically just says man i dont know whats wrong with me im all fucked up. This was not a man on a mission he was making it up as he went. In an attempt to diffuse the situation the captain asked the hijacker if he wanted to sit in the jump seat. In the background the controller cleared flight 1320 to descend all the way down to 2000 feet from the 5000 feet that they were at. They needed to land soon and so the question was posed to the hijacker if it would be okay if they landed in Boston, the answer was immediate, no. Fly east was the answer. At this point James hartley had sqaked 7500