A key member of the Air Line Pilots Association will meet Monday with the American Jewish Congress to discuss the continuing problem of air piracy. The pilots’ representative will be Captain John Ferguson, chairman of the Region I Air Safety Committee of the Pilots’ Association. In calling the meeting, State Supreme Court Justice Edward J. Greenfield said the American Jewish Congress was seriously concerned with recent inaction on the issue of hijacking. Judge Greenfield is chairman of the Committee On International Affairs of the Congress’ New York Metropolitan Council.
“We have seen nothing in the last few months to indicate any lessening of the danger of air piracy or any effective attempt to stop it,” Judge Greenfield said. “A whole new wave of plane hijacking has again put passengers in peril of their lives. It is true that two of these recent attempts were thwarted, but in one of them–where security guards shot and killed two aerial bandits in mid-air–the risk to the passengers was too terrible to contemplate with any equanimity.”
Judge Greenfield continued: “The one safe way to curb air piracy, and the way that the American Jewish Congress has urged in a previous meeting with Captain Ola Forseberg, head of the International Federation of Airline Pilots’ Association, is to seal off any country that cooperates with air kidnappers, that refuses to return immediately a hijacked plane with its passengers and crew, and that affords sanctuary to those responsible for the hijacking, or fails to prosecute them or extradite them promptly.” “This is the crux of the American Jewish Congress’ continuing campaign against hijackers, which was in no way diminished by the recent release of the two Israeli citizens who had been kidnapped by Syria last summer in the hijacking of a TWA plane,” he said.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
