Eastern Air Lines Shuttle Flight 1320
Douglas DC-9 · Aircraft hijacking
From Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) to Boston Logan International Airport (BOS)
Event
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Incident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Unknown
- Event fatalities
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- 72
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 2
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Douglas DC-9
- Aircraft type
- Douglas DC-9
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N8925E
- Operator
- Eastern Air Lines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR)To Boston Logan International Airport (BOS)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 121: Air carrier (scheduled domestic passenger service)
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Miscellaneous
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Personnel › Other
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Boston, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
From the Wikipedia article
Eastern Air Lines Shuttle Flight 1320, carrying passengers from Newark to Boston, was hijacked around 7:30 p.m. on March 17, 1970, by John J. Divivo who was armed with a.38 caliber revolver. Captain Robert Wilbur Jr., 35, a former United States Air Force pilot who had been promoted to captain six months prior, was confronted by Divivo, who ordered him to fly east and alert him when the plane was a few minutes away from running out of fuel.
Something startled the apparently suicidal hijacker, who shot the copilot, James Hartley, 30. Despite being mortally wounded, Hartley was able to force the gun from Divivo's hand and shoot the would-be hijacker three times before lapsing into unconsciousness, and eventual death. The hijacker also shot the pilot Wilbur in the arms. Despite his wounds and his copilot being shot and unconscious, Wilbur safely landed his aircraft while talking to air traffic control, telling them his copilot was shot and needed emergency services.
Wilbur: We're on 3100 and you better get the police at the airport. The copilot is shot. Get us in a hurry BOS. Boston ATC: 1320, I gotcha, continue right inbound to the airport. You're 13 miles east, indent on code 04. Wilbur: Ok, get-get an ambulance to the airport also. My copilot is discombobulated. He can't talk or anything. He's passed out. We've been shot.
Despite his injuries, Divivo arose and began clawing at Captain Wilbur, attempting to force a crash. Wilbur hit Divivo over the head with the gun he had retrieved from the center console. The pilot was able to land the plane safely at Logan International Airport, and the hijacker was arrested. On October 31, 1970, Divivo hanged himself in Charles Street Jail while awaiting trial for murder.
The incident was the first aircraft hijacking in the United States to end with a fatality other than the hijacker. Previous hijackings were treated as a tolerable inconvenience and expense, and airlines resisted security measures to avoid scaring away passengers. No advance bookings were required, and fares were paid onboard. The fatality and threat of an intentional crash prompted the first airport security passenger screenings in the United States to begin within a few weeks, though not everyone was screened at first.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Eastern Air Lines Shuttle Flight 1320” (revision 1358434621, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article
NTSB remarks
PX HI-JACKED ACFT USING PISTOL.STRUGGLE OCRD DURG WHICH CO-PLT,PLT AND PX WERE SHOT.PLT LNDD ACFT.
NTSB's remark from its 1962–1981 archive, as recorded (abbreviated, at most 98 characters): the archive has no narrative
Sources
Wikipedia article: Eastern Air Lines Shuttle Flight 1320
- Revision
- 1358434621 · 2026-06-08 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q5329967
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record
- Event ID
- 19700317P038339
- Case number
- Unknown
- Dataset
- historical-pre1982
- Source SHA-256
- abe1a933b4b73583d61684309f7f0610c281e3c1de3537c6471bf2a98ba6481d
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "Eastern Air Lines Shuttle Flight 1320" (page 32204483, revision 1358434621); merged with NTSB case NTSB19700317P038339 (PRE1982 tblFirstHalf (one row per aircraft, grouped by date, place and time))
- Date
- NTSB record NTSB19700317P038339: PRE1982 DATE_OCCURRENCE
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record NTSB19700317P038339
- Map position
- NTSB record NTSB19700317P038339: centre of the town the record names (GeoNames, CC BY 4.0)
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record NTSB19700317P038339: PRE1982 REGIST_NO, ACFT_MAKE, ACFT_MODEL; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- NTSB record NTSB19700317P038339: operated under Part 121: Air carrier (scheduled domestic passg.svc)
- Fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19700317P038339: PRE1982 TOTAL_ABRD_FATAL of each aircraft, plus people on the ground and others outside the aircraft
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19700317P038339: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (4)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Eastern Air Lines Shuttle Flight 1320" and NTSB case NTSB19700317P038339, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this US event the NTSB's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- From NTSB's 1962-1981 archive (PRE1982), which holds at most a short remark (98 characters, abbreviated) instead of a narrative; the accident type, phase of flight, causes and conditions are NTSB's codes, decoded as the archive defines them.
- Reviewed means this record passed the site's consistency check, not that it was checked against a narrative or report - there is none to check against.
- The operation category is mapped from the archive's operator and operation codes and has not been reviewed.