It was the longest and perhaps most unusual aerial hijacking in history. The true story, which Netflix will now release as a series on April 8-, is centered around two Paraguayan soccer players who in 1973 impersonated guerrillas and held hostage a plane from the Colombian airline Sociedad Aeronáutica de Medellín for over five days with 82 passengers on board, following a bizarre itinerary that included stops in Aruba, Ecuador, Chile, and Argentina.
Netflix's series ''The Hijacking of Flight 601' is directed by Colombians Camilo Prince and Pablo González, who also worked on' The Great Heist,' based on the true story of the 1994 heist of the robbery of the national bank El Banco de la Republica.
The duo revisits a true story from their country, although this time the story unfolds almost entirely in the air, coinciding in timing perhaps with the boom generated by the series "Society of the Snow," which details the true story of a Uruguayan rugby team's experience in 1972 after Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed in the Andes mountains.
'The Hijacking of Flight 601' starts next year, on May 30th, 1973, when the airplane HK-1274 took off from Bogota. First, the flight made a stop in Cali, and then another in Pereira. Two new passengers boarded the plane and waited until the aircraft was in the air to take out guns and announce that it was a hijacking.
The official synopsis describes: "When two armed revolutionaries hijack and threaten to blow up Flight 601 unless the Colombian government releases 50 political prisoners and pays them a hefty ransom in cash. When the political leaders refuse to negotiate, the aggressors start shooting one passenger per hour and force the plane to fly across Latin America."
"Meanwhile, the Captain and two courageous flight attendants try to outwit the hijackers while negotiating with their local officials. Amid the imminent horror, the crew must fight back to return the hostages back home safely," it adds.
The series, spanning 6 episodes and featuring Mónica Lopera, Christian Tappan, Enrique Carriazo, Ángela Cano, and Marcela Benjumea, vividly recreates the tense and desperate moments experienced by the passengers fifty years ago.
'The Hijacking of Flight 601' is full of plot twists and anecdotes that illustrate how human nature is revealed in the face of adversity.
Spoiler alert: A flight attendant takes on a leadership role by acting as a liaison with the outside world to bring and take food, a group of passengers manages to escape, the hijackers feel empathy for some of their hostages, and finally, their identity will be revealed.
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