When an SLC flight was hijacked to Cuba and the world mostly shrugged

The intrigue: Hijackings were so common in the early 1970s that passengers and crews had become surprisingly blasé about it.

• Globally, there was a hijacking about every five days.
• Locally, a Utah man had parachuted into Provo after hijacking a Newark-L.A. flight for ransom less than a month earlier.

What drove the news: After smuggling a gun through the airport on May 6, 1972, hijacker Michael Hansen seized the plane's PA system 15 minutes after takeoff.

• "He rambled on, mostly about political things like if the United States doesn't stop bombing we are going to kill Richard Nixon," recounted a Salt Lake woman, one of 64 people aboard.
• Hansen claimed to be part of the "National Anti-Imperialist Movement," which no one believed. It turned out he was a draft dodger.

Follow the map: Hansen flew to L.A. and continued to Dallas, Tampa and Havana.

Quotes du jour: "There's really not much to it. It was very simple," a pilot said.

• "He was not a kook [or] a hippie," another passenger said of Hansen, which an airline spokesperson confirmed: "He definitely was not a kook."

Zoom out: During another hijacking the same day in Pennsylvania, a passenger joked with the hijacker about the bathroom queue. Another was threatened after sauntering up to the magazine rack.

The bottom line: "Not a kook" may have been good enough for the friendly skies back when hijackers were a dime a dozen — but not for authorities on the ground.

• After being imprisoned for three years in Cuba, Hansen was transferred to the U.S. and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Previously in Old News

• Liquor lady hits the hoosegow
• Utah's first glimpse of Germany's concentration camps
• April fool? Mormons accused of New Mexico takeover
• The fire-breathing rags of Station No. 2
• The Challenger: A Utah cautionary tale