On the afternoon of November 24, 1971—Thanksgiving Eve—a man walked up to the Northwest Orient counter at Portland International Airport and purchased a one-way ticket for Flight 305 to Seattle. He paid cash. He gave his name as Dan Cooper. The flight was short, barely thirty minutes in the air on a clear run, and the plane was a Boeing 727-100, registration N467US, carrying 36 passengers and six crew members.
The man took seat 18C (some accounts say 18E), in the rear of the cabin. He was wearing a dark business suit, a black clip-on tie, and a white shirt. He ordered a bourbon and soda. Witnesses later described him as white, in his mid-forties, approximately five feet ten inches to six feet tall, with dark hair. He was calm and apparently unremarkable to the people around him.
Shortly after takeoff, he passed a handwritten note to flight attendant Florence Schaffner. She initially assumed it might be from a man trying to flirt and tucked it in her pocket without reading it. The man leaned toward her and said something to the effect that she should read the note. She opened it.
The note said he had a bomb.
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## “I Have a Bomb in My Briefcase”
What happened in the next several hours was by any measure extraordinary in its methodical calm—on both sides of the negotiation.
The man, who will be referred to here as Cooper throughout, told Schaffner he wanted to speak with her privately. When she sat beside him, he opened his briefcase briefly to show her the contents: what appeared to be red cylinders, wires, and a battery. Whether what he showed her was a functional explosive device or a convincing prop has never been established, because the briefcase was never recovered. The FBI has never made a finding that what he carried was a working bomb.