March 5, 1981 (Thursday)
- Continental Airlines Flight 72 was briefly hijacked by a man who had been fired the day before from his job at the Los Angeles International Airport. Victor Malasauskas brought a 9-mm automatic pistol with him after buying a seat in first-class on the flight bound from LAX to Phoenix. An alert flight attendant saw that he had a concealed weapon, and all but four passengers and two flight attendants were able to get off of the airplane before he realized that he had been spotted. The last of the hostages escaped later in the day. Malasauskas, whose claim that he had a bomb turned out to be false, was later sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Read more about this topic: March 1981
Famous quotes containing the word march:
“Unaffected by “the march of events,”
He passed from men’s memory in l’an trentiesme
De son eage; the case presents
No adjunct to the Muses’ diadem.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)