Airstair

Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano Boeing 727 with rear airstair deployed

An airstair is a passenger staircase that is built in to an airliner. The stairs can be raised or lowered while the aircraft is on the ground, allowing passengers to board or depart the aircraft without the need for a mobile staircase or a jetway.

The most well-known airstair is probably that found in the rear underbelly of the Boeing 727. It was this airstair that obviously caught the eye of a man travelling under the name Dan Cooper, also known as D. B. Cooper. On November 24, 1971, he hijacked Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 flying from Portland, Oregon. With the $200,000.00 he extorted for the release of the passengers, he parachuted from the plane at low altitude after lowering the airstair on the aircraft, a feat most experts say would have been impossible to pull off successfully had he hijacked any other jet airliner and tried to exit the plane through one of the cabin doors. It is still debated today whether he was in fact successful, because neither he nor most of the money ever surfaced again.

Following the D. B. Cooper incident and two other similar cases, the Federal Aviation Administration required a device to be fitted to 727 airstairs preventing them from being opened in flight; this device came to be known as a Cooper Vane.

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