It was reported this week that remains of a parachute were found buried in a field in the Oregon region where the FBI estimated legendary hijacker D.B. Cooper would have landed had he survived his bailout from a Northwest Orient (shortened to just Northwest Airlines in 1989) 727 in 1971. Cooper (an alias used to buy the airline ticket) has become the stuff of legend after no trace of him was ever found, nor his true identity ever discovered, after his night time leap with $200k in cash strapped to his chest. About $6K of the $200K that Cooper received as hijack booty was found along a stream in 1981 in the Oregon woods, but none of the other money has ever been located. The FBI has kept the case open all these years, and is inspecting the parachute to see if it matches the serial number of the chute given Cooper. If it turns out to be the parachute, then it signals with a high probability that Cooper survived the jump. Why else would someone bury the parachute? A deployed parachute is easily spotted from the air, which was full of planes looking for the hijacker soon as the sun came up the day he jumped. Also, with all the notoriety surrounding this case, if someone from that area ever found a parachute, I'm sure they would have reported it to the authorities instead of just burying it.

There has been a lot of speculation that there was no way Cooper could ever have survived parachuting from a commercial airliner, but if you look at the facts, there was probably at least a 50/50 chance he could have survived such a jump. The Boeing 727-100 was one of those commercial airliners that had rear stairs. These stairs made it easier to replenish the plane with supplies on the ground, or help in boarding passengers at airports that didn't have jet ways. It's also interesting to note that originally these stairs on the 727-100 could be opened in flight, but after the D.B. Cooper hijacking, and another similar one over Utah in 1972, the 727s were modified so that the rear stairs  could not be lowered in flight, using a device nicknamed the "Cooper Vane".  If you going to jump out of a plane, going out the back end is probably the least risky way to do it. (Look at video of military jumpers and they are almost always going out the aft ramp of troop/cargo planes such as a C-130 or C-17.) It provides the least risk, because you don't have to worry about hitting any other structure of the airplane (wings, engines, horizontal stabilizer, etc.) that could be potential impact points if you tried jumping out of a side-facing door. Also, the wind blast is mitigated somewhat by being in the slipstream of the aircraft. Cooper also instructed the pilot to fly at 10000 feet altitude and an airspeed of 150 knots, perfectly survivable bailout conditions. Also, it's hard to believe today, but there was little or no security screening prior to boarding an airliner back in 1971. You could carry a gun, a bomb (which Cooper claimed he had), etc, and nobody ever checked you before you boarded. Also, you could use any name you wanted to buy a ticket, unlike today when names are checked and rechecked against terrorist watch lists well before you ever get near a commercial airliner. All these factors added up to a hijacking that has probably become the most legendary in the short history of commercial aviation, and allowed the mysterious D.B. Cooper to disappear into the night.