Skyjacking as homage

last updated 8 January 2015

Frankfurt

A German man threatened to crash a stolen plane into the European Central Bank in Frankfurt this week, saying he wanted to honor the memory of one of the American astronauts who died when the space shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986. Frank-Stephan Strambach, 32, stole a small plane at gunpoint from a nearby airport and circled the bank building erratically for several hours, talking to media and police by radio. Thousands of people were evacuated from the bank and other Frankfurt skyscrapers. Strambach said he was trying to remind the world of the career of Judith Resnik. “She deserves more attention,” he said. “She was the first female Jewish astronaut.” After he was patched through for a phone conversation with Resnik’s family in the U.S., Strambach agreed to land the plane. He was promptly arrested and remanded for psychiatric observation.