1972: A Chronicle of Flight, Capture and Death

Even before last week's outbreak of skyway savagery, so far this year 63 aircraft around the world, 35 of them in the U.S., had been the objects of hijacking, anonymous bomb threats or airport violence. The worst incidents:

Jan. 7: Allen Sims and Ida Robinson seized a Pacific Southwest airliner and ordered the pilot to fly to Cuba. The plane refueled at Los Angeles and at the Tampa, Fla., airport, which was shut down during the episode.

Jan. 20: Richard Charles LaPoint, 23, an ex-Army paratrooper, used a fake bomb to obtain $50,000 and two parachutes from Hughes Airwest. He jumped to safety 80 miles northeast of Denver, but was later captured.

Jan. 27: Heinrich VonGeorge, 45, an unemployed father of seven, used a fake bomb and a starter's pistol to extract $200,000 from Mohawk Airlines. An FBI agent gunned down VonGeorge as he and his stewardess hostage entered a getaway car in Purchase, N.Y.

April 9: Stanley Speck, 31, a Stanford graduate, boarded a PSA plane, claimed he had a pistol and a grenade, and demanded $500,000 and four parachutes. He was tricked by the pilot into leaving the plane to pick up flight charts, and captured by the FBI and the airline president.

May 3: Four leftist Turkish guerrillas captured a Turkish Airlines flight out of Ankara and threatened to destroy the plane with guns and grenades if three political prisoners were not released. The gunmen diverted the flight to Bulgaria, where they were granted asylum.

May 30: Three Japanese terrorists disembarked at the Tel Aviv airport and submachine-gunned the crowd. Two gunmen were killed and one was arrested after they had killed 27 and wounded more than 70.

June 2: Willie Roger Holder, 24, a Viet Nam veteran, and Catherine Mary Kerkow, 20, a student, seized a Western Airlines flight en route to Seattle. They collected $500,000 in ransom money and flew to Algeria via New York (where Holder released 36 hostages). The Algerian government granted them asylum, but returned the money.

June 8: Seven men and three women (one of whom had a small child) took over a Czechoslovak airliner going to Prague. The pilot was accidentally killed in a cockpit melee when he refused to change course. All were arrested in West Germany; Czechoslovakia is seeking extradition.

June 24: Martin McNally, 28, an unemployed veteran, demanded $502,200 at gunpoint on an American Airlines flight over Tulsa, Okla. He got the ransom money in St. Louis, as well as a fresh plane and pilot, and set off for Toronto. He parachuted to safety in an Indiana field, but lost the ransom, which was found by a farmer. Police arrested McNally at his Michigan home.

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