The Day America Pretended a Hijacked Plane Had Landed in Cuba

Daniel Holland
3 hours ago
5 min read

Two men in a yellow plane cockpit; one holds a gun. Text reads "The Fake Cuban Airport Planned in Florida." Serious expressions.

In the years when the Cold War was at its most uneasy, American skies became an unlikely stage for a peculiar form of political theatre. From the early 1960s through to the start of the 1970s, hijacking a passenger aircraft and demanding to be flown to Cuba became almost routine. The motives were often desperate. Some hijackers were fugitives seeking escape, others were self-proclaimed revolutionaries in search of asylum, and some were merely impulsive men yearning for a dramatic gesture. Whatever the reason, the result was the same: another aircraft diverted to Havana, another long night for air traffic controllers, and another diplomatic tangle for Washington.

Between 1961 and 1973, more than one hundred and fifty American aircraft were hijacked, many bound for the Cuban capital. The demand was so common that some airlines began keeping maps of the Caribbean and Spanish phrasebooks in the cockpit. For passengers, the experience was exhausting but seldom fatal. They would land in Havana, watch the hijacker led away by Cuban soldiers, and fly back to Florida the following morning.

Magazine cover with a close-up of an airplane's underside. Text: LIFE, The Secret Bobby Fischer, SKJACKING. Bold colors, dynamic angle.

An Unlikely Solution

By the end of the decade, U.S. authorities had grown weary of the humiliation. The Federal Aviation Administration and the FBI were under pressure to halt the hijackings without resorting to mid-air gunfire or international incidents. They needed a way to outwit the hijackers without endangering passengers. Out of this frustration emerged a peculiar idea: if hijackers insisted on reaching Havana, perhaps they could be tricked into thinking they had done so — without ever leaving American soil.

According to accounts from former officials and later investigations, federal agents quietly explored the possibility of creating a convincing illusion of Havana in southern Florida. The concept was both theatrical and pragmatic. When a hijacker demanded to go to Cuba, the pilot would instead divert to a prepared airfield where palm trees bordered the tarmac, Spanish signs could be quickly erected, and Spanish-speaking personnel stood ready to greet the plane. In some reports, Cuban music was even played through loudspeakers. The hope was simple: convince the hijacker he had arrived, let him lower his weapon, and arrest him before he realised his mistake.

Evidence for the “Fake Havana” Plan

This improbable strategy is not simply the stuff of Cold War legend. Contemporary and retrospective evidence confirms the idea was discussed seriously at the highest levels of American aviation security. The long-running design podcast 99% Invisible documented the deliberations of the late 1960s, quoting FAA officials who recalled that “a phony Havana airport in south Florida” was proposed as a way to deceive hijackers before arresting them on U.S. soil. The Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center later cited former FAA Administrator John H. Shaffer, who admitted that the plan’s flaw was obvious: “A fake airport would work once — and that’s all.”

The proposal also appears in mainstream histories of the hijacking epidemic. In The Skies Belong to Us (2013), journalist Brendan I. Koerner traced the idea as part of a suite of unconventional responses explored before airport screening became mandatory. Wired magazine, excerpting Koerner’s research, published photographs of the era alongside the anecdote, and Vox’s 2016 retrospective confirmed that the plan was debated in earnest. Even Britannica’s short entry on aviation security includes a reference to the proposed replica of Havana’s José Martí Airport.

While no public record shows a fully executed operation complete with transcripts and visual documentation, the combined weight of these independent accounts (government recollections, journalistic histories, and institutional references) leaves little doubt that the “fake Havana” airport was more than an urban myth. It was a serious, if short-lived, attempt to bring stagecraft to the business of counter-terrorism.

The 1971 “Fake Havana” Landing

One story that persists, though lacking an official transcript, describes an Eastern Air Lines flight in November 1971. The aircraft, travelling from Newark to Miami, was seized by a lone hijacker who demanded to be taken to Cuba. Instead, the pilot diverted to Homestead Air Force Base, just south of Miami, which had been used for such experiments. As the plane came to a halt, Spanish-speaking officers and soldiers stood in view, and the hijacker, convinced he had reached Havana, surrendered his weapon. Whether this specific incident unfolded precisely as described remains uncertain, but it illustrates how the logic of deception fitted the crisis atmosphere of the time.

Skyjacking Becomes a Crisis

By the early 1970s, hijackings had become so frequent that newspapers joked grimly about “skyjacking season.” Pilots were advised to cooperate fully, airlines insured their aircraft against loss, and passengers often accepted their fate with weary resignation. Yet the government feared escalation. With political violence on the rise during the Vietnam era, officials worried that hijackers might soon turn to sabotage or use aircraft as weapons.

It was in this anxious environment that more extreme proposals (including the fake-airport plan) briefly seemed rational. U.S. officials even considered constructing a permanent replica of Havana’s airport in Florida, though cost and practicality soon ended the idea. The very fact it was discussed speaks volumes about the surreal logic of Cold War crisis management.

Southern Airways Flight 49

If deception was the clever option, the alternative was chaos. On 10 November 1972, three armed men commandeered Southern Airways Flight 49, a DC-9 carrying twenty-seven passengers. They demanded ten million dollars and threatened to crash into the Oak Ridge nuclear complex in Tennessee if refused. After thirty nerve-wracking hours zigzagging across the United States, the aircraft eventually flew to Cuba. In an ironic twist, the hijackers who had viewed the island as a revolutionary haven were promptly arrested by Fidel Castro’s government and imprisoned.

The episode, along with the earlier deceptions, convinced Washington that improvisation was no longer enough. The following year, the United States introduced mandatory passenger and luggage screening nationwide. Within months, the age of routine hijackings was over.

The End of an Era

The story of America’s “fake Cuba” survives as one of the more unusual footnotes in Cold War aviation. It reflects an age when illusion and improvisation were used to navigate the fine line between security and diplomacy. Even if the plan was only partially realised, its existence captures the imagination: a moment when officials genuinely considered solving a crisis by building an imitation country on a Florida runway. It remains a reminder that, in times of tension, the boundary between theatre and policy can blur in surprising ways.

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