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Another debatable deterrent that Hubbard advocates is elimination of the death penalty so that skyjacking cannot be undertaken as a form of unconscious suicide. He also favors stressing the skyjacker's sexual problems to make piracy seem humiliating rather than heroic. It would help if the press played down the details of particular crimes. Skyjackers, says Hubbard, "are like small boys acting out a play for which they have read the script."
Latent Violence. For those who suddenly find themselves the victims of air piracy Hubbard recommends treating the skyjacker like a frightened animal. Passengers and crew should move slowly and deliberately in his presence, and show courtesy, warmth and understanding in order not to trigger his latent violence by making him feel cornered or attacked. Passengers should stay noncommittally aloof, stewardesses should avoid seductiveness because this frightens air pirates, and everyone concerned should avoid any trickery, which is especially alarming to paranoids. "The crew needs the same understanding of mentally ill people as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital," says Hubbard. Even without training, air personnel often know intuitively what they should do. "Many times a crew will have worked wonders, have the skyjacker at the point of giving up, only to land in an airport where 200 police are waiting. In a flash, the hijacker has a gun at the captain's head."
Outside forces can be useful, however, as Hubbard himself has proved. Last year, for instance, he managed, by long-distance telephone to Argentina, to maneuver AWOL Sailor Robert Jackson into surrendering 70 hours after he had hijacked a Braniff 707 at San Antonio and ordered it to Buenos Aires. "We were dealing with a very tired skyjacker who had not slept for most of 48 hours. I figured if we could crowd him with problems at the low point of his fatigue and will to continue, we would have him—and we did."
While waiting for Jackson to get to that physiological low—which Hubbard says every human being reaches around 5 a.m.—Hubbard counseled against actions that might make Jackson's adrenalin flow. The skyjacker, for instance, had demanded a DC-8 for a flight to Algeria. At Hubbard's insistence, however, Braniff officials reluctantly agreed to keep the DC-8 out of sight: "If he had seen it, it would have pepped him up enormously." Hubbard also got the airline to replace a radio operator whose voice, after 17 hours, had come to sound familiar and comforting to the skyjacker. After letting Jackson stew in isolation for 21 hours, Hubbard next injected a note of anxiety by having airline officials notify the crews that they were no longer physically fit to fly. Hearing this, Jackson let two crew members leave the plane; five hours later he gave himself up.