Crime Of Aircraft Hijacking

Considering aircraft hijacking as the most serious criminal behavior to threaten aviation safety, various countries around the world are taking international aerial convention as the dominant and reference to their national conditions in legislating corresponding domestic laws in such concern. Our country has been always in the position of severe punishment by laws as countermeasures, thus it has acceded to three international conventions of hijacking aircraft and absorbed the provisions of Convention into its Criminal Law. However, in Chinese Criminal Law, the definition of this crime is more general, which results the field of criminal law holds different views and opinions of aspects about the component elements of this crime, identification standard of accomplishment of a crime, penalty applicability, etc. This article through researching from the regulation on the crime of aircraft hijacking based on the International Aviation Convention, the regulation in the civil law system countries and common law system countries. We can infer that the violent behavior hereby refers to the physical enforcement performed on legal aircraft operators in order to inhibit their rebellious behavior. Coercion behavior refers to performing mental intimidation, coercion or suppression on legal aircraft operators to make them have the psychological effect to suppress their mental resistance. The determination of other methods requires the combination of the purpose of hijacking, which is defined as the behavior equivalent with violent and coercion with a causal relationship with aircraft hijacking. In order to protect the legal interest of this crime, it is acceptable not to limit the coverage of aircraft in Criminal Law. But when involving international flights, the nature of aircraft flying activities should be considered for application of the appropriate jurisdiction. As only aircrafts in use can pose a threat to aviation safety, the crime object in such connections assumed as aircrafts in using. According to the characteristics of the results of hazard analysis, the threatened legal interest is air transport safety, in which consists of any critical elements including serious injury, death or damaging to aircraft. In view of the case of the crew of the aircraft in recent years, this article is to study whether the crew can become the subject of the crime. When the captain who is the legal aircraft operator hijacked aircraft, as he abandons the particular assigned flight mission and becomes against the will to drive, control and guarantee navigation safety of aircraft, captain then is the crime subject, while the other flight crews which are not the legal aircraft operators can also be the crime subject. The key subjective element is the criminal intent, although the criminal intent and motivation are variable but do not affect the accomplishment of crime. The identification standard of accomplishment of a crime can apply the controlling theory. The length of time in control is not the controlling element. Instead the key element in identification of crime is whether the aircraft is under the controlling effect with willingness instantly or not. On the judicial application, it is suggested to base on various consequences such as causing serious injury, death or aircraft damage in arriving at different measures including death sentence with reprieve, immediate implementation of death sentence in order to effectively prevent or eliminate crime occurrence or to avoid further consequential loss.