Flight attendant Florence Schaffner spent the most time with Cooper initially and was the first to read his note. Tina Mucklow spent the most time with him during the extended wait at Sea-Tac and on the flight south. Other passengers and crew members saw him to varying degrees. All of them saw a man who appeared calm, ordinary, and middle-aged.
The composite drawing that eventually became Composite B captures a type rather than a face: a middle-aged white man with dark hair and regular features, wearing a suit. Investigators have pointed out that this description fits millions of men in the United States in 1971. It is a description that can neither confirm nor exclude most suspects.
The one physical characteristic that has proven most useful as a screening tool is height—Cooper was described by multiple witnesses as around five feet ten to six feet. This range still encompasses a very large portion of the male population of the era, but it has allowed investigators to eliminate clearly short or tall suspects.
The composite sketches are sometimes described in popular accounts as if they are portraits of a confirmed person. They are not. They are artistic reconstructions based on the fallible memories of witnesses who encountered a man they had no particular reason to be observing carefully, in the stress of a hijacking, for a period that in some cases lasted several hours and in others was brief. They represent a best effort and nothing more.
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## The Aviation Aftermath