On April 7, 1994, Federal Express Flight 705, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 cargo jet carrying electronics equipment across the United States from Memphis, Tennessee, to San Jose, California, was the subject of a hijack attempt by Auburn R. Calloway, a Federal Express employee facing possible dismissal for falsifying his flight hours.
Calloway boarded the scheduled flight as a deadhead passenger carrying a guitar case concealing several hammers and a speargun. He planned to crash the aircraft hoping he would appear to be an employee killed in an accident, so his family could collect on a $2.5 million life insurance policy provided by Federal Express. Calloway tried to switch off the aircraft's cockpit voice recorder (CVR) before takeoff, but the flight engineer noticed and turned it back on, believing he had neglected to turn it on. Once airborne, he attempted to kill the crew with hammers so their injuries would appear consistent with an accident rather than a hijacking. Despite severe injuries, the crew fought back, subdued Calloway, and landed the aircraft safely.
During his trial, the prosecution argued Calloway was trying to commit murder–suicide. Efforts by the defense team to put forward an insanity defense were ultimately unsuccessful and Calloway was convicted on federal charges of attempted murder and attempted aircraft piracy and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Three flight crew members were in the cockpit on this flight: 49-year-old Captain David G. Sanders, who had worked for FedEx for 20 years and previously served with the U.S. Navy for nine years during the Vietnam War; 42-year-old First Officer James M. Tucker Jr., who had worked for FedEx for 10 years and previously served with the U.S. Navy for 12 years during the Vietnam War and People Express Airlines for three years; and 39-year-old Flight Engineer Andrew H. Peterson, who had worked for FedEx for 5 years. The previous flight crew had gone one minute over their eight-hour flight limit the previous day, so they were replaced by Sanders, Tucker, and Peterson.
Also in the airplane was 42-year-old FedEx flight engineer Auburn R. Calloway, an alumnus of Stanford University and a former Navy pilot and martial-arts expert. Calloway, who was divorced from his wife four years earlier, wanted to ensure that their two children were financially secure enough to attend college. However, Calloway felt that FedEx discriminated against him as an Afro-American by assigning him only as a flight engineer despite being a qualified pilot. Furthermore, he was facing a hearing scheduled the following day for falsifying his flight hours, and believed that dismissal was inevitable, although a colleague who had previously flown with Calloway stated that it was unlikely that FedEx would terminate an employee for such an offense. Boarding as a deadhead passenger, Calloway planned to hijack and crash the plane while disguising it as an accident, so his family would benefit from FedEx's life-insurance policy worth US$2.5 million (equivalent to $5.4 million in 2025). Calloway intended to murder the flight crew using blunt force. To accomplish this, he brought on board two claw hammers, two club hammers, a speargun, and a knife (which was not used) concealed inside a guitar case. He also carried with him a note written to his ex-wife "describing the author's apparent despair". Just before the flight, Calloway had transferred over US$54,000 (equivalent to $117,300 in 2025) in securities and cashier's checks to his ex-wife.
Before takeoff, as part of Calloway's plan to disguise the intended attack as an accident, he attempted to disable the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) by pulling its circuit breaker to interrupt power. When the flight crew arrived, they noticed that Calloway's presence in the cockpit was a breach of etiquette for a deadheading passenger, although they did not suspect hostile intent at the time. During the standard preflight checks, Peterson, the flight engineer, noticed the pulled breaker and reset it before takeoff, reactivating the CVR. However, if Calloway had killed the crew members with the CVR still on, he would simply have had to fly for 30 minutes to erase any trace of a struggle from the CVR's 30-minute loop.
About 26 minutes after takeoff, as the plane was passing 19,000 feet (5,791 m), and the flight crew carried on a casual conversation, Calloway went into the back to get his weapons, entered the flight deck, and attacked Peterson, Tucker, and Sanders. All three members of the crew received multiple blows from a hammer. Both Peterson and Tucker, the first officer, suffered fractured skulls, and Peterson's temporal artery was severed. The blow to Tucker's head drilled shards of bone into his brain and temporarily rendered him unable to move or react, but he was still conscious. Captain Sanders reported that during the beginning of the attack, he could not discern any emotion from Calloway, just "simply a face and his eyes".
When Calloway ceased his hammer attack, Peterson and Sanders began to get out of their seats to go after Calloway. Calloway left the cockpit and retrieved his speargun. He came back into the cockpit and threatened everyone to sit back down in their seats. Despite a loud ringing in his ear and being unbalanced and dazed, Peterson grabbed the gun by the spear between the barbs and the barrel. Tucker, an ex-Navy pilot, performed extreme aerial maneuvers with the aircraft as the struggle between Calloway and the other crew members ensued. He pulled the plane into a sudden 15° climb, throwing Sanders, Peterson, and Calloway out of the cockpit and into the galley. To try to throw Calloway off balance, Tucker then turned the plane into a left roll, almost on its side. This rolled the men along the smoke curtain onto the left side of the galley.
Eventually, Tucker rolled the plane almost upside down at 140°, while attempting to maintain a visual reference of the environment around him through the windows. Peterson, Sanders, and Calloway were then pinned to the plane's ceiling. Calloway managed to wrench his hammer hand free and hit Sanders in the head again. Just then, Tucker put the plane into a steep dive. This pushed the men back to the smoke curtain, but the wings and elevators started to flutter. At this point, Tucker could hear the wind rushing against the cockpit windows. At a speed of 460 knots (530 mph; 850 km/h), the plane's elevators fluttered so much that the control surfaces became unresponsive due to the disrupted airflow. This lack of control tested the aircraft's safety limits. Tucker also began to sense a Mach tuck effect as the airflow over the wings approached the speed of sound. Tucker realized the throttles were at full power, increasing the speed of the aircraft. Releasing his only usable hand to pull back the throttles to idle, he managed to pull the plane out of the dive as it slowed down.
As the DC-10 leveled off at 5,000 feet (1,524 m), Calloway managed to hit Sanders again while the struggle continued, and this time the blow nearly knocked him unconscious. Sanders was losing strength, and Peterson was bleeding from his ruptured temporal artery and was starting to go into shock. In spite of his diminishing strength, Sanders grabbed the hammer out of Calloway's hand and attacked him with it. When the plane was completely level, Tucker alerted Memphis Center, telling them about the attack and requesting a vector back to Memphis. He requested an ambulance and "armed intervention", meaning he wanted a SWAT team to storm the plane. The flight crew eventually succeeded in restraining and disarming Calloway.
With Calloway momentarily under control, Captain Sanders took control of the aircraft from First Officer Tucker, who by then had his sense of touch severely diminished and had additionally become paralyzed on the right side of his body. Tucker went back to assist Peterson in restraining Calloway. Sanders communicated with air traffic control, preparing for an emergency landing back at Memphis International Airport. Meanwhile, Calloway started fighting with the crew again.