The Hijacking of Flight 601

The year is 1973. A region of the world ravaged by poverty and joblessness in a country led by Communists. Two men try their hand in hijacking a plane demanding a ransom which would feed their brethren back home and freedom of a few from prison, taking hostage of 80 passengers, 2 crew members, a pilot and a co-pilot. 

Will the duo succeed?

This is the plot of the web series on Netflix, loosely based on a real-life hijacking of an airplane in Columbia, which was then considered the longest one.

 

Borja (Vallentin Villafane) and El Toro Solano (Alian Devetac) board Aerobolivar 601 at Bogota, Columbia just like any other passenger. Only that they carry guns and have an agenda.

 

The flight is under the care of Commander Richard Wilches (Christian Tappan), a senior pilot with hundreds of hours of flying various machines that fly in the air and his co-pilot and rookie Guillermo Luis Lequerica (Johan Rivera) whom he looks down upon for his childish attitudes.

 

As the flight takes off, the two terrorists announce their hijack plans and threaten to kill the passengers one by one if their demands are not met by the Government.

They take control of the cockpit and ask the pilot to speak to air traffic controllers and the Airline Management to inform their situation.

 

Engineer Pirateque (Enrique Carriazo), the manager of Aerobolivar starts negotiating with the hijackers and agrees to initially pay USD 50,000  (of the total USD 200,000) against the release of all women passengers. 

Even as he is underway to pay the ransom, the management of the airline refuses to agree to their demands as ordered by the premier of the country.

The hijackers make the pilot fly from one airport to another for refuelling – from Cali to Pereira and Medellin in Columbia, to Cuba (where they are denied permission) and thereafter to Guayaquil in Ecuador, Lima in Peru, Asuncion in Paraguay, Resistencia, Mendoza and Buenos Aires in Argentina Oranjestad in Aruba, before finally landing back in Bogota.

 

What flows through the 8 episodes is a mix of human emotions – from anger to fear, from boredom to sensitivity for fellow human beings, all the way up to remorse!

 

Monica Lopera who plays the Flight attendant as Edilma Perez, displays wonderful demeanour all through the series. A single mother of three little children, she is initially not onboard the ill-fated plane, but chooses to board when the first tranch of the ransom is paid to the hijackers.

 

Angelo Cano who plays co-attendant as Barbaro Gallo has supported Monica in the web series bringing the right mix of flavour. 

In fact, she is the one who realises the purpose of the act taken up by the hijackers (based on their troubled past) and is eventually seen settling down with one of them after the entire episode is over.

The series is based on a book by Italian writer Massimo Di Ricco named Los condenados del aire. Directed by CS Prince and Pablo Gonzalez, the retro-infused series is inspired by one of the longest aerial hijackings in Latin American history. 

The series tends to get a bit boring and elongated at times, especially as we watch the English dubbed version. But don’t give it up yet and continue watching it through the 8 episodes this weekend. Worth a watch.