[wastoute]

When I went to jump school I did one jump from a C-140. We were told 120 mph is the slowest the plane can go and stay in the air. I am telling you that jumping at 120 mph is no picnic, even with the door baffle. My question is, “What speed was the airplane (a commercial airliner) going when DB exited?” I suspect it was greater than 200 mph. I doubt DB survived the exit.

[Carriage Hill]

Personally, I never saw any reason to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.

[sailor76]

Cooper ordered the pilot to remain below an altitude of 10,000 feet and to keep the airspeed below 150 knots. An experienced skydiver would easily be able to dive at 150 knots.

http://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/d-b-cooper/

150 KN is about 175mph. Not a problem for an experienced jumper especially if he flared his body out and slowed down to a terminal velocity of about 120mph

[DUMBGRUNT]

Anderson reflected on the hijacking when he boarded a Boeing 727, the same model that Cooper jumped from, at the World Freefall Convention in Quincy, Illinois, in the mid-1990s. Anderson explained the instructions jumpers received before boarding for the four-minute ride to altitude this way: “We were instructed to be completely geared up before boarding; helmets on and goggles on. We all had to make sure all our gear—closing flaps, riser covers, shoes, shoelaces—were completely secure.”

Jumpers at the convention had a choice of exiting on a slow pass of 134 knots or a fast pass of 182 knots. Anderson says “I went on the slow pass at 155 miles per hour. The aft stairway was removed. I was surprised how small the opening was. You couldn’t get two people to jump together.”

Jumpers were advised to exit with arms and legs in, almost in a fetal position. Nonetheless, the exit was much different from what Anderson expected, and he was caught off guard. “The first thing you noticed after exit was the heat from the jet engines and the smell of jet fuel. There was a dead void, then the blast from jet steam. It felt like I was being tackled from behind.”

Over several years, Anderson made a total of six jet jumps. “During the first jump I had to fight to settle down and get stable after exit. It took me a good 1,000 feet to get stable. [Successive] jumps were no problem once you knew what to expect.”
http://parachutistonline.com/feature/secrets-db-cooper-part-two-evidence-absence
At Perris Valley Skydiving in California, Ted Farnsworth also jumped a jetliner, though it was a DC-9 with the aft stairs intact. He said, “You could stand on the stairs and not be knocked off. While it is turbulent on the stairs, the stairs themselves protect you from the direct windblast.” Even with 30 years of skydiving experience, Farnsworth said, “I was shocked at the force of the exit and surprised how unstable I was. It felt like falling face first 10 feet onto a mattress.”

[PLMerite]

"When I went to jump school I did one jump from a C-140."

This thing?:

Where do you exit that doesn't entail getting sucked into the engines?

[Prospero]

I believe it was an old 727, no duh, of course, since the event was fifty-five years ago. I flew on one airline's inaugural flight of the model in 1964, and the pilots took it up to 43,000' And after intercepting the take off on a Lockheed Electra, the contrast was future shock. The experience made an impression.

I don't think the airlines made it a standard practice.

Regardless.. the 727-100, IIRC, was quite capable of what might seem to be near stall speeds under the conditions recorded.

The documentary was not completely useless, even to many of us who hashed and rehashed the Cooper hijacking over and over to near exhaustion years before the Whirled-White Web. It summed up the various threads, though the producers felt the need to hype some new and definitive revelation going into and out of each commercial break.

Aside from that, some actual critical thinking was applied by their experts, including their final two investigators, who, in the end, failed to seal the deal.

The producers filmed those Los Angeles investigators as they "ambushed" Robert Rackstraw.

The more compelling case reviewed was probably that of L.D. Cooper. Unfortunately, his niece seemed to be angling for a guest slot on Coast-to-Coast.

Rackstraw probably has a case, though he should have denied it outright when he was similarly ambushed by reporters decades ago, requiring the F.B.I. to rule him out for reasons they can't disclose.

The producers should have reviewed the technical aspects of the hijacking, though they did show that there was more than a few vets who could and still could bail successfully from a partially deployed rear stairs of a 727-100 from the lowest altitudes, that is below that aircrafts accepted range.