Twenty-five years after three crew members of Federal Express Flight 705 withstood an attempted hijacking, the plane containing that chaotic fight for survival still flies for FedEx regularly.
The McDonnell Douglas DC-10 involved first flew in 1985, per flight records, and is a frequent presence at the FedEx World Hub at the Memphis International Airport. On Thursday, it flew from Memphis to Montreal, according to Plane Finder Data.
But the plane took a much more notorious journey in April 7, 1994, a flight from Memphis to San Jose, California. It never reached its intended destination, instead managing an emergency landing back at Memphis International Airport after some deft airmanship.
What happened on thatflight has been the subject of a TV episode, its own book and high honors for its crew: Capt. David Sanders, first officer Jim Tucker andflight engineer Andy Peterson.
It also led to life in prison for FedEx flight engineer Auburn Calloway, whose aim was to take over the plane and crash it, so his family could cash out on his life insurance policy, The Commercial Appeal reported in 2007. His planned destination may have been FedEx’s headquarters.
“I personally think that was (Calloway's)ultimate goal, but he'sthe only one who knows,” said Dave Hirschman, author of "Hijacked: The True Story of the Heroes of Flight 705" and a former reporter for The Commercial Appeal. “He was motivated to do maximum harm to FedEx.”
'He’s going to kill us'
Calloway entered the plane before the crew did on April 7, his guitar case filled with hammers, a knife and a spear gun, said a 2014 report from The Commercial Appeal.
Tucker, Sanders and Peterson all assumed Calloway was just an employee hitching a ride, a “jump-seater” in industry parlance.
“Pilots used that ability for work matters and personal matters every single day, so the idea of a company pilot getting on an airplane to go to the West Coast would have been totally normal,” Hirschman said.
Takeoff for the DC-10 proceeded as normal, with a relaxed conversation flowing among crew members, according to a co*ckpit recording transcript from tailstrike.com.
Calloway’s attack changed that.He bludgeonedthe crew members with a hammer, Hirschman said,which could deal debilitating damage while mimicking the appearance of crash injuries.Thehammer's blowgave Tucker a skull fracture.
“He’s going to kill us,” Sanders said after Calloway began, according to the transcript.
The crew saw a brief reprieve as Calloway left the co*ckpit to retrieve his spear gun. Peterson and Sanders got out of their seats.
“Sit down, sit down, get back in your seat, this is a real gun, I’ll kill ya,” Calloway said, per the transcript.
Airline pilots are trained for hijacking scenarios, Hirschman said, but the training is typically focused on de-escalating the situation and reasoning with the would-be hijacker. But the crewknew immediatelytheir situation was different, Hirschman said.
“It wasn’t a situation in which talking and trying to de-escalate the situation was going to help,” Hirschman said. “They were in a fight for their lives from the moment they were attacked."
So Peterson and Sandersfought Calloway instead.
“Andy (Peterson) grabs the speargun, which I really admire him for doing, and pushes (Calloway) out the crew door, and the fight is on in the back,” said Mark Lombardo, a 727 airplane captain at FedEx then who had flown with Calloway before.
Daring maneuvers throw off attacker
As Peterson and Sanders wrestled to get Calloway under control, Tucker alertedthe Memphis Air Route Traffic Control Center to what was happening. He then performed daring aerial maneuvers with the DC-10 to throw Calloway off balance.
Tucker tipped the plane’s nose up, sending the fighters back, before turning the plane almost upside-down and sending it into a deep dive, as shown in a 2018 simulation of the flight.
“(Tucker) literally had it on its backside, and to pull that off structurally, I don’t think anybody’s ever done that since,” Lombardo said. “And the airplane’s still flying today. All of us have flown that airplane.”
Hirschman said no DC-10 has ever flown faster than the one in Flight 705. As Tucker took the plane to its limit, hewas losing control over part of his body due to the skull fracture, said the 2007 report from The Commercial Appeal.
“It saved our lives,” Sanders said of Tucker’s flying, according to the report. “What Jim did with that plane, I still can’t believe.”
Tucker eventually returned the plane back to its regular position and called the control center to set up an ambulance and “armed intervention” for when they landed, per the transcript.
By then, the other two crew members needed help from the wounded Tucker to control Calloway.
Life-altering flight ends for 705 crew
After more fighting, Sanders began piloting the plane to land it on a Memphis runway while communicating with the Memphis Air Traffic Control Tower.
“You understand we're declaring an emergency, we need security to meet the airplane, we'll stop it on the runway if we can,” Sanders said, according to the transcript.
“Express 705 heavy, affirmative, all that's been taken care of, that security will be available for, as well as medical assistance,” traffic control responded.
Sanders, after changing course to a different runway so he could land safely, got the plane back to the ground in Memphis. Peterson and Tucker stayed on Calloway.
After landing, the four men’s blood coated the plane’s interior like a grenade had gone off, retired airport CEO Larry Cox told The Commercial Appeal in 2014.
A paramedic then entered the aircraft and put Calloway in handcuffs, Circuit Judge David A. Nelson wrote in a decision for U.S. v. Calloway,ending the life-altering flight that would lead to Calloway’s life sentence.
“Calloway had disenfranchised so many of his contemporaries that it was kind of like, we’re glad that good versus evil prevailed,” Lombardo said.
FedEx declined comment for this story. Attempts to reach the crew members of Flight 705 were unsuccessful.
Was FedEx going to fire Calloway?
The hijackingwas one day before a scheduled disciplinary hearing that Calloway worried would end his career for good.
“The company began investigating irregularities in the reporting of Mr. Calloway's flight hours, and he was directed to appear at a hearing scheduled for April 8, 1994, in Memphis, Tennessee,” Nelson wrote in his decision.
But there was no guarantee FedExwas going to cut ties with Calloway.
“The bottom line was he falsified some company documents, his employment application,” Lombardo said. “Even that would not have gotten him fired, to be honest with you. We might’ve brought him in and talked to him.”
There was also no guarantee the Flight 705 crew was going to prevail in their fight with Calloway.The 6-foot, 2-inch Calloway had a black belt in martial arts, Lombardo said, and was “all muscle.”
“Make no mistake about it: It could have gone either way, and that is the absolute truth,” he said.
Calloway may have had a better chance at overpowering the flight’s original crew: one man and one woman. But that crew went one minute over their eight-hour flight limit the previous day, Hirschman said.
“They happened to be replaced with three strapping guys,” Hirschman said. “… Had the original crew gone, they would be the first to tell you that they would have not been able to prevail.”
Event bonded FedEx crew for life
Among the severe injuries sustained by the crew, Tucker and Peterson had skull fractures and Sanders had to have his right ear sewn back in place while also dealing with deep head gashes.
Hirschman said Tucker had the hardest road to recovery because of the severity of his wounds.His injuriescaused motor control problems on his right arm and leg, said Nelson's decision.
“He had to have multiple surgeries and years of physical and cognitive rehabilitation,” Hirschman said of Tucker. “… His recovery has been so much more complete than any of the medical professionals would have guessed at the time.”
The wholecrew ultimately recovered whilehandlingthe burdens of the attack in their own way, Hirschman said.
“They way that they’ve found a new purpose for their lives and at the same time have this bond and respect for each other — it all just reflects the best of human nature,” he said.
None could fly a commercial jet after the head injuries they received, The Commercial Appeal reported in 2007. But the event bonded them for life.
“Quite honestly, we never saw ourselves as heroes,” Sanders said then. “It is our Navy training that allowed us to see what our limitations were in an airplane. It’s like a race car driver knowing how close he can get to the wall.”
Max Garland covers FedEx, logistics and health care for The Commercial Appeal. Reach him at max.garland@commercialappeal.com or 901-529-2651 and on Twitter @MaxGarlandTypes.
