The first air hijacking was in 1930, but the most spectacular air piracies were carried out by Palestinian commandos in the skies over Europe and the Middle East in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Between 1968 and l972, there were 134 successful or attempted hijackings -- a rash of seizures condemned by government and international organizations who seemed powerless to stop the takeovers.
In the first recorded hijacking, political activists in Peru in l930 commandeered a plane flown by an American pilot. No U.S. airliner was hijacked until 1961.
Most of the hijackings have been outside the United States. Many of the planes were hijacked by Palestinian militants trying to draw attention to their demands for an independent state.
The Palestinian hijacking campaign began in July 1968, when three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine seized an Israeli El Al Boeing 707 en route from Rome to Tel Aviv and ordered the jet to Algiers.
The last five Israeli passengers and seven crew were not released by Algeria until Aug. 31, following intensive negotiations and Israel's pledge to release captured Palestinians.
In the most audacious takeover, Palestinian terrorists led by the notorious dark-haired beauty Leila Khaled seized four jetliners in early September 1970, and had them flown to a deserted airstrip in the Jordanian desert, where they were blown up after the passengers were evacuated.
By 1974, airline authorities beefed up security and almost put an end to the airborne takeovers. That year, there were no successful hijackings and only three attempts.
The 1976 hijacking by Palestinians of an Air France jetliner to Entebbe, Uganda -- where the hijackers were eventually shot and killed during a successful Israeli rescue action -- was that year's only act of air piracy.
In 1977 and l978, there were seven attempted hijackings but no successful takeovers.
The hijacking of four planes on opposite sides of the globe Monday capped a year of large-scale piracies and indicated airborne terrorism may be getting out of hand again.
The highest hijacking-related death toll came in 1979 when 100 people were killed in a commandeered Malaysian Airline System 737 en route from Penang Island to Singapore that exploded and crashed over Malaysia. There were four successful hijackings that year.
In l980, eight U.S. domestic flights were successfully hijacked to Havana by Cuban refugees who had second thoughts about staying in America. There were also four takeovers of international flights that year.
This year has seen the longest hijacking drama -- the 13-day takeover of a Pakistani jetliner forced to fly to Damascus, Syria. Pakistani officials met the hijackers' demands by sending 54 political prisoners to Damascus in return for the release of 148 passengers on March 8.
On March 28, Indonesian terrorists forced a domestic flight to fly to Bangkok, where the plane sat on the tarmac for three days before specially trained commandos owverpowered the gunmen. One American passenger was shot and wounded while trying to escape.
