The First Hijacking of a Commercial Flight Occurred Between Macau and Hong Kong

On July 16, 1948, a Consolidated PBY-5A Catalina seaplane named Miss Macao, owned by Macau Air Transport Company, a subsidiary of Cathay Pacific, took off from Macau with 23 passengers and 3 crew members. Its destination: Hong Kong.

Unfortunately, Miss Macao never landed at Kai Tak, Hong Kong’s international airport at the time. A fisherman later reported seeing an airplane diving nose-first into the sea. That plane was Miss Macao. The only survivor of the crash happened to be one of the four air pirates, as hijackers were referred to back then.

The reason for the hijacking was to rob the passengers, as only the wealthy could travel by air at that time, and to hold them for ransom. The operation didn’t go as planned, however. While the pilot refused to hand over the plane to the pirates, one of the passengers got into a fight with one of the pirates.

After the pirates shot both the pilot and the co-pilot, the airplane entered a steep dive and crashed into the Zhujiang River estuary in mainland China.

With this failed attempt, Miss Macao entered the history books as the first recorded hijacking of a commercial flight.