"A Man and a Woman Forgotten to History Had Changed Flying Forever"

"Their plan is hare-brained and half-baked. But they imagine it will work because so many other people have gotten away with even crazier stunts. More importantly, no one is really trying to prevent them from taking over a plane in the first place. For a decade, the airline lobby steadfastly resisted the cost of additional security. The majority of planes hijacked were detoured to Fidel Castro's Cuba, and for a while it was simply cheaper for the airlines to pay for the extra fuel to fly the planes back home. And even federal officials thought many fliers would rather take the bus than submit to the inconvenience of metal detectors. As the head of the FAA put it in the 1960s: 'Can you imagine the line that would form from the ticket counter in Miami if everyone had to submit to police inspections?'"

Hector Tobar in the Los Angeles Times reviews Brendan I. Koerner's The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking.