William Scott; Pilot in D.B. Cooper Hijacking

William “Scotty” Scott, 81, who piloted the plane hijacked by the notorious D.B. Cooper. Scott was the Northwest Airlines pilot at the controls Nov. 24, 1971, when a passenger named Dan Cooper, later mistakenly identified as D.B. Cooper, boarded the plane in Portland, Ore. On the way to Seattle, the man in dark glasses passed a ransom note to a cabin attendant, threatening to detonate a bomb unless he was given $200,000 and four parachutes. Everyone disembarked in Seattle except for Cooper, Scott and three other crew members. Back in the air, over Oregon, Cooper jumped from the rear stairs of the Boeing 727 with two parachutes strapped on and a sack full of money. He was never seen again. Scott never saw Cooper because he was concentrating on flying the plane. A year later, the pilot lost his son, grandson, daughter-in-law and her grandmother in a plane crash near St. Louis. Scott, who had begun flying in 1944 for the Army Air Force, flew 34 years for Northwest. He shunned interviews after the hijacking, which remains unsolved. On Sunday of prostate cancer at his home in Green Valley, Ariz.