a situation in which someone commandeers an aircraft, usually at gunpoint during flight, forcing the pilot to fly somewhere other than to the scheduled destination
Cooper was the first to hijack an airline for money in what is still the nation'sonly unsolved skyjacking.
skyjacking in American English
(ˈskaiˌdʒækɪŋ)
noun
an act or instance of hijacking an aircraft
Word origin
[1965–70; skyjack + -ing1]This word is first recorded in the period 1965–70. Other words that entered Englishat around the same time include: genetic engineering, no-fault, overdub, red-eye, wraparound-ing is a suffix of nouns formed from verbs, expressing the action of the verb or itsresult, product, material, etc. (the art of building; a new building; cotton wadding). It is also used to form nouns from words other than verbs (offing; shirting). Verbal nouns ending in -ing are often used attributively (the printing trade) and in forming compounds (drinking song). In some compounds (sewing machine), the first element might reasonably be regarded as the participial adjective, -ing, the compound thus meaning “a machine that sews,” but it is commonly taken as a verbalnoun, the compound being explained as “a machine for sewing”
Examples of 'skyjacking' in a sentence
skyjacking
It is also the only unsolved skyjacking in the world.