Hijacker kills pilot so he could fly jumbo jet
ALL jumbo jet hijacker Yuji Nishizawa ever wanted to do was fly an airliner.
The computer flight simulation fanatic briefly achieved his ambition yesterday but only after killing the captain of an All Nippon Airways flight soon after take off from Tokyo.
He wanted to try some aerial tricks involving the majestic span across Tokyo Bay.
‘‘I wanted to fly under the Rainbow Bridge and make a loop,’’ he told police after his capture.
Mr Nishizawa, 28 and unemployed, had bought a ticket for the internal flight to the northern town of Sappora and passengers on the upper deck wondered why he was wearing gloves on a sweltering 91 F day.
They found out soon after the Boeing 747ö with 517 people on board ö took off.
Mr Nishizawa stood up, pulled an eight inch kitchen knife on a flight attendant and said: ‘‘Take me to the cockpit.’’
Once inside the cockpit, Mr Nishizawa forced the co pilot out and ordered the captain to steer toward the US military’s Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo.
When Captain Naoyuki Nagashima, 51, refused, the hijacker stabbed him in the neck and seized the controls.
As the captain lay dying, Mr Nishizawa grabbed the controls and the plane suddenly lost altitude.
At one point, the plane descended 2,000 feet in five minutes, to 1,000 feet from Earth, said the Transport Ministry.
Unnerved by the drop in altitude, the co pilot and another ANA pilot who happened to be on board burst into the cockpit and pounced on the hijacker.
Others helped truss him up with neckties and belts while the off duty pilot took the controls.
Forty nine minutes later, the jumbo jet landed safely back at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport with and the hijacker was handed over to police.
Mr Nishizawa said he was a fan of computer flight simulation games and just wanted to fly a real plane, said a Haneda police official .
The government tightened security at airports across Japan and launched an investigation into how the suspect got a knife aboard.
Accounts from the cabin depict a flight thrown into quiet terror once the hijacker pulled out his knife.
The crew told passengers that the plane had been hijacked and urged them to remain quiet.
They showed cartoon videos to keep children from panicking, passengers said. A home video shot in the cabin during the hijacking showed people sitting quietly.
Passengers later praised the crew’s efforts to reassure them.
‘‘I was shocked when I learned that the pilot was killed,’’ said Miharu Hondo, a housewife on holiday. ‘‘When we saw a doctor coming into the plane, I thought maybe someone was hurt during the hijacking. But I didn’t imagine that anyone had died.’’
Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi sent condolences to the pilot’s family. ANA’s president apologised.
Passengers said there were signs that the hijacker was troubled before he pulled out his knife.
One said he saw the man leave his seat and speak quietly to a flight attendant before seizing her.
Yoshiko Kawase, 60, said she noticed the man while he was still in his seat because he appeared nervous and was wearing dirty white cotton gloves.
The pilot’s slaying was the first ever for a passenger or crew member in Japan’s 20 hijackings since 1970, said transport ministry official Fumihiko Oinuma said.
The last hijacking in Japan was in January 1997, when a man armed with a kitchen knife commandeered a flight from Osaka to the southern city of Fukuoka.
© The Examiner, 1999