lxchilton

For sure, though it seems like Cooper did not know how much of a dent it would make in the overall range of the 727. This is one of the big reasons that I don't think he was planning on going to Mexico--if the realization that this wouldn't work was going to completely foil his plan then he wouldn't have taken it sitting down like he did. Whatever back of the napkin math or bit of 727 trivia he knew regarding range was only important on paper, not to where he was going to want to jump.

My assumption is that he figured it would increase drag and keep them from going too fast which could make for a more dangerous jump/keep the stairs from lowering all the way.

This is her later recollection right? I read this the same as the previous. We are going here, gear down, flaps down, no stopping in the US, aft door is open, stairs are down. You would need a "once you are in the air...lower the stairs" or something to that effect. Anyway, these notes are indeed after the fact creations; we can't escape their imperfections. My goal is only to say that there are far simpler explanations for Cooper's mindset and that the complexity of an assumption is one of the most important pieces of any theory that we have. When we are presented with theories in a manner that brushes aside other theories that utilize the same group of facts and data we have to push back; can't be too narrow in our focuses.

But that is indeed what happened and his lack of any kind of resistance suggests he didn't care because he was planning to get out of there ASAP. If we need to reduce this to two options I see it like this: 1) he knows that he wants to jump ASAP from the moment he plans the hijacking and all the decisions he makes are is service of this one goal. 2) he is some kind of genius savant who is doing a silent mental calculus in his head with no real interaction with the crew because he knows his note is going to be understood 100% and if it isn't he will come up with a plan silently and is constantly changing and tweaking his whole hijacking despite sometimes being incredibly uncool, loud, and scary. This seems real all over the place. I can't imagine a reading of this where the gear and flaps are not down the whole time. There's no "once you get to 'x' flaps and gear down, etc."

He knew enough to say flaps at 15 and gear down, but that doesn't mean he was correct in his assumptions. He could have had first hand knowledge of those things or he could have talked to someone who had; Cooper might have been in Vietnam and had friends and contacts who were hands on with the 727s overseas without having any actual experience with them himself. They lower the flaps to 30 degrees later on because they're going to fast; it's another example of him knowing a lingo but maybe not understanding it. You can look up the range of a 727, but not understand what would affect it adversely. I think he would have had to renegotiate the demand if he was banking on his calculations being correct. That didn't happen; he presented an option and eventually settled on something that was quite unlike his original demand but for the heading. If Cooper was misunderstood, why on earth was he silent? It doesn't make any sense that he would suffer in silence if it was so impactful to his original plan. I can't do the mental gymnastics to get there.

If he had demands about the flight configuration he would have been clear. I don't think a huge change from the known narrative like when the gear was to come down, etc. would be buried under the available facts and info we have. If that's what he wanted he would have said, I want to take off with the door in this position, fly for this long, open the door, gear and flaps go down at this point, etc. That's not just going on in his head because that wouldn't get it done and it's not going to be verbalized and then be completely MIA in the transcripts.

I'm not saying that he made the demand not knowing that it was impossible, just that his reason for mentioning Mexico is to make it seem like he wasn't leaving the plane any time soon. That's the con. Once they tell him that won't work and he is able to secure another destination southish that's long far enough away that the possible search area would be impossible to cover, he's fine with it. It's possible that he was misunderstood and/or the notes and transcripts we have are somewhat off in terms of exactly what transpired, but I don't think it's more likely than not that they misunderstood him in a way that suggests something other than assumptions that more closely fit the facts. The aviation experience thing is tenuous. I'll admit he was familiar with being on airplanes 110%, but I am not sure that he knew about them from a pilot or crew member level. Our boy was a paratrooper, plain and simple*. *This is a theory! A supposition!

The whole thing stinks of "get in the air going south and make them think we are flying for a LONG time." Barring actually knowing Cooper's thoughts I can't think of a simpler more elegant reasoning.

I don't think he knew it would be rejected though. If he knows the basic flying distance of a 727 and knows a way to make sure the plane is flying at an altitude and speed he can safely jump out at but does not know that these two in conjunction are going to ruin the available distance, then he could easily have assumed it wouldn't be rejected. The big key to my thinking behind him not actually caring that it gets to Mexico is he doesn't fight it. He says they can't refuel anywhere in the US and then the second they say it can't be done he just rolls over and finds another place that happens to get the plane going south again. It's technically possible that he is completely torn up about this, thinks that Reno is going to be a refueling stop, and he will eventually jump in outside the States, but there's no evidence for this. He would have to be internalizing the entire war between jumping now or a long time later, chancing it with being on the ground again; he is on record as being somewhat loudly irritable when things aren't going to his liking so I would assume that something this big would get him going again. Ultimately I think Mexico is a ruse and he's not overly bothered by Reno because he won't be on the plane and they are currently still thinking that he and the bomb will be on the plane until Mexico. He's not tipping his hand and he's still going to have the giant swathe of land where he could have jumped (damn that pressure bump!). Why make it more complicated than it has to be?

If Reno was such a huge shift in terms of where he was planning on jumping why didn't he put up any kind of fight about it? He just seems to roll it into the litany of things he's just let happen even though they weren't what he asked for and those (knapsack, taking forever to fuel, d rings [maybe!]) didn't have any real impact on where he needed to be when he escaped the plane. I'm having a hard time believing that it was such a sea change in his plan and yet he doesn't really rise to the occasion.

This is certainly not impossible though if the original plan had also involved flying to Mexico wouldn't this be a bigger inflection point (having to take 305 in Portland) than the change to Reno in Seattle? He also seems so unfazed during the first half of his (per your theory) already completely different hijacking; he would have had to do some back of the napkin math about flight distance and all too.

The number of assumptions any of us is making is large enough to be worrisome; the problem is that there are so many damn variables that we don't have a choice. I understand that you think your variables are...better...but it unfortunately doesn't make that the truth. It is very probably that Cooper assumed that they would fly south from Seattle and he would just jump when he thought he was nearing Portland. It's the simplest plan because it's where he started from; transportation will be close. Now why did he assume that they would fly south? It could have been that he was completely in the dark about flightpaths or he could have engineered it, or at least was confident in engineering it. The fact that he never tells anyone to fly a certain path suggests that it wasn't high on his list of "stuff that has to happen" and we don't know why that is. Maybe he did some huge calculus between learning that the landing had to be in the United States, but it seems vastly simpler that he didn't actually care where they plane went as long as people thought he was in it the whole time. There are far fewer assumptions with that scenario than one where we assume that he did some sort of mental gymnastics that there is no real evidence for.

The whole thing is ambiguous enough that he could have either known exactly what he was doing or literally had no idea. I lean towards some understanding of it, but it really could have been more of the copious luck that Cooper seemed to have.

For sure. It's hard to really pin anything down when the end result is that everything worked out overall. There are so few pieces of information that point in only one direction.

I feel like there are three options here, both of which would be supported by your evidence: a) Cooper knows exactly what v23 is and how it will get him flying near to Portland and knows that it is possible they would take the same path if they were going to go to LA but he wants to suggest that he is going to jump at a much later point OR b) Cooper has no idea about v23 and the map in his head of the PNW and California is based of what it seems like a flightpath might be to SF or LA; he just doesn't want to be near the ocean/thinks that they will be flying west first OR c) Cooper is just making sure people believe that he is either going to jump at a much later point or not even jump at all. The ruse of Mexico might suggest that he plans to somehow escape once they are on the ground in Mexico. It's all noise rather than an exacting plan. Just go south and make sure they think I am invested in decisions that won't matter until way after I am gone. I'm going with C. Since Cooper doesn't every give any real indication of were they should be flying I think he just wants people to think he's jumping later and making a comment like "it's too busy there" suggests that he is going to be on the plane for a long time. All these decisions are in the service of making people think he has no plans to be off the plane until hours and hours later than he is.

Honestly, I agree with the first bit there! That seems to suggest (if Tosaw is indeed not pulling this out of thin air) that Cooper was upset about something he expected, not realizing that he actually had a different kind of chute. Where I take that information is where we differ; my biggest thought here is it says Cooper wasn't a pilot or crew on an aircraft. He could easily have been a paratrooper and never used the bailout rig before. Regardless what I'm most interested in is what you think the binary of this situation is. Are there only two possible Coopers? Because he could be upset about d rings and also not understand the bailout vs mains situation and also be a very accomplished military paratrooper. I am dead set against him being a sport parachutist, but the military avenue seems wide open. Where are you hoping the possible answers take you?

I absolutely don't think it's irrelevant, however, it's the choosing something Cooper might have said to mean exactly one thing that's problematic in this line of inquiry. If he is upset about the lack of d rings and says "where are my damn d rings?!" that doesn't automatically mean that he knew something or did not. His outburst is just that and we (me, other humans) often say things in anger or annoyance that don't necessarily jibe with the realities of our lives or professions. I think it is important to look at these disconnections between what Cooper is presented as vs what actions he took and how those together muddy the picture of who he ultimately was, but I think it's dangerous to take them and tie them up into a singular truth about Cooper when they are connected with the whole of the hijacking and not just one singular moment. "His "show on the road" comment is irrelevant,,, he was referring to having to wait to file a flight plan, then saying you can do it in the air..." It could have been, but he is clearly shaken and angered by the time it has taken to fuel the plane; it could have everything to do with that and ultimately nothing to do with his understanding of IFA, etc. This is another example of being sure of something in the case when there is no way to be. I don't think there is anything wrong with it, but I wouldn't present it as "irrelevant" to any and all. "We have two options.. Cooper just didn't realize they were pilot bailout rigs and jumped anyway... that tells us he is not very experienced with parachutes. Or.. He realized they were bailout rigs understood the difference and didn't think that difference was worth getting the right ones.." I think those are two general buckets you could create, but inside them there are so many possibilities that you can only narrow down to generalizations. "(...)this requires more understanding of the differences, something nobody has brought up" Does it? Maybe. It seems like there are a lot of semantic battles here with little substance to them. "(...)and he was on the ground for about 1 hr 40 min regardless,, So, the delay to get the main/reserves would not be significant." That 1 hr 40 min is caused by serious delays on the ground and he was delayed getting into Seattle because of how long it took to get the chutes and cash...why would he suddenly be fine with extending the time when he is clearly, vocally upset about all the time that's already been wasted? He's convinced that someone is actively trying to sabotage him. The flight crew is as well. "I was trying to get feedback from jumpers to determine the psychological delta between jumping in those conditions with a pilot bailout VS main/reserve." Possibly useful, though none of those folks who might answer would (I assume) be the kind of person who would hijack a passenger jet. Also there's not going to be consensus and I wonder why some anecdotal information seems to be good enough for you while others are essentially dirt.

But isn't his anxiousness in terms of being on the ground a possible explanation for why he might not put up a fight? It really does seem like he didn't get what he wanted; it's plausible that he a) was to worried about getting in the air ASAP to fight anything and decided to deal with what he had b) was so sure of his ability to jump that he just didn't care c) literally had no idea what he was doing d) other I think I agree with what you are saying in that the question is important, but there isn't a way to answer it without making a choice that is your own and not Cooper's. His "get the show on the road" energy is just as viable an answer as many others.

At least it's an ethos.

There are certainly levels of speculation; the scale goes from "Cooper never jumped and hid on the plane/aliens/Tina was involved" all the way down to the very rational. I don't know how we qualify "bad" speculation exactly. For me it's a conscious counting of each decision we have to make for Cooper without knowing what decision he made or why he made it. Cooper being so antsy to get into the air again may have impacted his choices in terms of the gear he was provided. It might not have, but we cannot say that it didn't. As for a landing zone, he definitely didn't have a pinpoint spot chosen, but the 10ish x 10ish mile area you have been mentioning is not at all bad if your plan is to jump out of the plane once you are getting close to civilization. Walking several miles on a chilly night is uh...less problematic than jumping out of a passenger jet in the same. "I doubt any rational jumper would do that jump in those conditions with only a legit old pilot bailout rig." Rational folks don't hijack passenger airplanes and plan to jump out of them. "If you guys fail to understand that, it is your problem." Why be confrontational? Everyone is talking, everyone has opinions, and none of us know. We all have to work within the confines of the unknown here and maybe one of the ways one of us takes it will lead to a person or a lead or a broken briefcase in the forest.

I mean we are ALL making it up beyond the salient facts that we know: Cooper received parachutes and jumped from the plane. There are so many more factors in play here than this binary option. Maybe Cooper's level of experience would not have had him preferring the chute setup that he received, but we already know that he has been delayed enough to completely ignore the fact that they gave him the money in the wrong container. In a vacuum you might be able to home in on the nuances of Cooper's decisions, but there is so much noise here that it seems like a fools errand. The guy knew something about parachutes and he didn't bring his own. He's probably military. He's 50ish, he probably jumped in WWII and/or Korea (money is on and for me), he might have jumped in Vietnam as well. Why go further than this when it's all supposition at that point?

It's a good question but you also have to include the fact that he's already so delayed by the fueling et al; Cooper has to weigh the value of each moment he's still on the ground as it's far more likely to impact his ability to complete his heist. No one can storm the plane in the air and so he might make decisions that are counterintuitive if we are trying to pin down his level of experience off of one or two actions.

That's the flip side of the coin--he was either prepared to deal with any kind of chute he got or completely ignorant of them. His actions suggest that he was capable though so I tend to think he wasn't put off beyond the situation regarding the knapsack and the lack of d rings.

This is probably the most important point regarding everything that happens post landing in Seattle; Cooper already feels like it's taken longer than it should have to get on the ground again and then it takes forever to get the fuel on board. Each new stage of the hijacking (getting the money, chutes, etc.) has to be fast tracked and trying to use his actions at this point to identify who he was or what level of experience he had is going to be somewhat flawed. His ability to keep moving under those circumstances is good evidence that he a) felt comfortable when it came to parachuting and b) had his wits about him to not freak out and keep moving forward with the plan, adapting to try and keep to a basic schedule as best he could. Cooper knew parachutes enough to deal with what he got.

I'd agree that if Cooper said it it was more a weird turn of phrase on his end rather than meaning anything other than "circulated" US dollars.