DB Cooper is the nickname of a mysterious hijacker, who in 1971, hijacked a Boeing 727 before escaping by parachute with a bag of money – and has never been identified or apprehended. With the recent release of ‘D. B. Cooper, where are you?!’ on Netflix there is renewed interest in this intriguing enigma. Cooper has always interested me, even more so after I took up skydiving myself. Over the years I racked up six hours and fourteen minutes in freefall time, at 72 seconds per jump,  and was also able to join the small number of people who have actually jumped from a 727, at the World Freefall Convention in 1996. So while I’m not going to claim to be an expert in hijacking, I can argue that my viewpoint isn’t totally uninformed.

For the West Coast skydiving community DB Cooper is a semi-mythical figure with a strong Robin Hood vibe. The bedrock assumption was that he was an experienced jumper. Questioning the idea that he was competent would go about as well as mentioning the teachings of The Man In Red (an aggressively Santa-denying teacher) in the presence of small children.

With hindsight, this is really odd. While the public perceives skydivers to be a cross between The Dude from The Big Lebowski and Biggles (Ed: I don’t) the truth is that they are usually smart, calculating people who think several steps ahead and plan things in detail. While a group of skydivers might look chaotic as they leave a plane, the reality is that everything is planned down to the second and the inch. You know exactly where you put your hands and feet at different stages of the exit. People even have specific jobs – I was a rear-rear-float. What looks like random chaos to outsiders is in fact just as carefully planned as the activities of a Premier League football team. Which makes the unwillingness to question DB Cooper’s competence really odd, as any experienced jumper planning it would have not made the dreadful social and fashion choices he did.

Faux Pas #1: Never ask someone if you can borrow one of their outfits in the middle of a soirée

Experienced jumpers hate borrowing gear. Buying your own rig is the first thing you do when you finish training. It’s not that you’re afraid that borrowed gear won’t work – it’s that the handles will be in slightly different places, and life is much simpler if they are always in exactly the same place when you reach for them, not two inches to the left. There’s also the issue of being dependent on somebody else’s stuff being available, and the risk that you might damage it. 

This means that if an experienced jumper decided to do what DB Cooper did, the starting point of their plan would be to use their own rig. OK, maybe not their own gear, but obtaining a second rig that can’t be traced to you is not that hard if you are in the sport and know where to look.  Asking the government to provide you with a parachute doesn’t make any sense, as you’d be telegraphing your plan to the authorities.

Let’s look at that plan for a second. If you ask the Feds for a parachute the obvious concern is that they’d give you a non-functioning one. In practice, I think people overestimate the risk of this. It would be hard enough to obtain one which works at minimal notice, never mind persuade a parachute rigger to sabotage somebody else’s rig and hand it to a man who showed up out of the blue and claimed to be from the government.  But Cooper asked for two sets of gear, presumably to rule this out.

Asking for one parachute makes your intentions obvious and starts a nationwide manhunt. Asking for two turns that into a North-America-wide hostage rescue situation and means that every law enforcement agency within 2000 miles will be sitting, ready for a call, to pounce on anyone who parachutes from anything, anywhere.

So, the obvious thing to do is obtain another rig before your flight and bring it aboard hidden in a carry on. You can then pretend it’s a ‘normal’ hijacking, but bail out, leaving a suitably incoherent and psychotic ‘suicide note’. They’ll know you jumped, but only after the fact. They will be looking for a body, not a fugitive. The idea that an experienced jumper planning a hijacking wouldn’t think of this strikes me as absurd.

Nobody will want to hear this, but the bottom line is that if you look at the DB Cooper story from the perspective of an experienced jumper it simply doesn’t make sense. While it’s clear he had some exposure to aviation, the truth of the matter is his plan was poorly thought through. We live in a culture where almost all entertainment portrays criminals as brilliant masterminds, invariably pursued by over-motivated detectives with out-of-control personal problems. This is not how real crime works. The Dunning Kruger effect that leaves the inept least equipped to judge their own limitations is as common in the criminal community as it is in the rest of society, and we have a tendency to mistake breathtakingly stupid, but original for audacious.

Faux Pas #2: Never wear slip-on shoes to a Jet Jump

The second terrible fashion choice was his footwear. DB Cooper was observed to be wearing slip-on shoes. In freefall, everything which isn’t extremely firmly attached will flutter rapidly and violently. I once forgot to tuck in the end of the strap which kept my helmet on, and in 72 seconds it not only hurt like bejesus but managed to draw blood. Slip-on shoes would be gone within a second. Any experienced jumper planning this would have opted for boots or shoes with really good ankle protection, especially as the chosen drop zone was rough terrain. Are we supposed to believe that he smuggled a pair of boots aboard, but didn’t think to bring his own rig?

Let’s also look at the choice of drop-zone.  The region he jumped into is about 50% trees. Wooded terrain sounds wonderful at first, but have you ever tried removing a parachute from a tree, at night, with no shoes? If you can’t hide the parachute you are in deep trouble.  At dawn, the helicopters that are part of the nationwide manhunt you’ve provoked will see it and will know your location to within a couple of miles. Then there’s the fact that trees are dangerous to land in. Smokejumpers, who land in trees for a living, have special clothing and bring equipment to escape from a tree when their parachute gets caught in it. Now I come to think of it slip-on shoes were the least of his sartorial problems.

Faux Pas #3: Never carry luggage that clashes with your outfit

The third faux pas was that having been given the money, he was observed to tie the bag to himself and the rig with paracord or string. This is a recipe to be beaten to death by your own stuff on the way down. There’s also no guarantee that the bag itself wouldn’t disintegrate when it hits the brutal airflow you encounter when you leave a 727. If you were planning on jumping from a 727 with a large bag of someone else’s money you’d need a custom container that integrates properly with your gear and is strong enough to withstand the forces you’ll encounter, while being capable of being carried out of a forest after landing. Once you owned such a bag you could use it as a carry-on, to bring your own parachute on board. But instead, we see a bizarre attempt to improvise. It’s the equivalent of turning up for a first date wearing a black plastic rubbish bag tied around the waist with string, but less sexy.

Just because you want to believe something, doesn’t mean it’s true

People who have never been to the West Coast of the US don’t understand how ridiculously big it is, and how easy it would be to vanish and never be found. When Steve Fossett disappeared the search found eight other aircraft that had vanished before it gave up.  Once you understand this, the failure to find of DB Cooper is not mysterious.

By David Rolfe

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