In The Hijacking of Flight 601, when a plane is hijacked by two revolutionaries, the crew finds ways to protect the passengers. The series is now streaming on Netflix.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary
Edilma Pérez, also known as Edie, is a flight attendant at Aerobolivar with three children, even though the airline does not hire women who have children.
Edie’s friend and colleague, Bárbara, is the only one who knows Edie’s secret, and she covers for her whenever Edie is late to work.
One day, Edie does not make it in time for a flight because of her children and gets fired by her supervisor, Manchola, who is also the airline’s director’s secretary.
Edie manages to convince the manager, Pirateque, to rehire her, but when the news comes that Aerobolivar Flight 601, the flight Edie was supposed to be on, is hijacked, Pirateque changes his mind.
As Edie was late to work, the flight left with only a new and inexperienced flight attendant, Marisol, who panics and passes out the minute she realizes that the plane has been hijacked.
This leads to the captain asking the airline to send her replacement, as he needs someone reliable in a situation like this.
The only attendant willing to board a hijacked flight is Edie; she volunteers to go in exchange for getting her job back, better pay, and a contract.
The hijackers, who claim to be revolutionaries fighting for the rights of the oppressed, force Captain Wilches to land the flight in Medellín to refuel before heading to Cuba.
Edie boards the flight there, and Bárbara joins her, refusing to let her best friend go alone. They then discover that the hijackers lied about taking the plane to Cuba.
The hijackers, Ulises and Toro, claim to be with the Revolutionary People’s Front. Instead of going to Cuba, they take the plane to Aruba.
Pirateque wants to negotiate with the terrorists, and when the airline’s owner refuses, he convinces the board to sell 10% of his shares. As a result, Pirateque gets to negotiate as the head manager.
Pirateque lets Ulises and Toro know that the Colombian Government will not listen to their demands until they start releasing passengers.
Edie overhears this conversation and finds out that the hijackers are refusing to release anyone. She then comes up with a plan to get a passenger released.
She convinces Amparo, the woman who had locked herself in the restroom since the hijacking began, to act like she is pregnant and going into labor.
Edie hopes that the hijackers will release her, thus prompting the government to start negotiations. However, the hijackers instead raise the ransom from $200,000 to $400,000.
When Pirateque fails to persuade the airline’s owner to pay the hijackers $400,000, he decides to leak the news about the hijacking to a reporter named Marulanda.
Marulanda arrives in Aruba to cover the hijacking, and the hijackers allow him onto the plane. Edie seizes this opportunity to show live on television that Amparo’s water has broken.
If the hijackers do not let Amparo go, their cause will not garner any sympathy from the public, so they agree to release the passengers for $200,000.
When Pirateque tells the press that Aerobolivar will be paying the hijackers, they release women and children among the 43 passengers.
Edie has a chance to leave, but she stays behind for Bárbara and the remaining passengers. It is then that the government announces its refusal to negotiate with the hijackers.
Additionally, anyone who negotiates with them will be considered an accomplice, which means Pirateque cannot keep his promise of paying them $200,000.
The government plans to send the military to bring the situation under control, and Pirateque informs the hijackers of this, which leads to them killing a passenger.
Edie and Bárbara then drug the hijackers. While they fail to put them to sleep long enough for the passengers to escape, they manage to free Wilches from the handcuffs.
Edie also opens a hidden door. Now that Wilches is free, he plans to overpower the hijackers with the help of the remaining passengers.
Bárbara relays his message to the passengers, and as they prepare to attack the hijackers, Pirateque arrives in Aruba with the money despite the government’s warning.
The hijackers receive $50,000 and are asked to release the first five passengers, at which point Wilches signals to the passengers to attack the hijackers.
Edie guides the passengers through the hidden door until one of the hijackers frees himself from Wilches’ hold and orders him at gunpoint to start flying the plane.
Now, only four crew members and five passengers remain onboard Aerobolivar Flight 601, which is flying without a destination.
It is revealed that Ulises and Toro were Paraguayan footballers who had come to Colombia to achieve their dreams of success.
They were trained by a man named Pacho, who leeched off aspiring footballers. Pacho refused to let Toro try out for a club that was interested in him before he paid him.
To arrange the money, Ulises, whose real name is Eusebio Eusebio, met a man named Checho and found the manifesto written by Ulises Lima at his house.
Eusebio was influenced by the manifesto, which taught him to satisfy his hunger by any means necessary.
Soon after, Toro suffered an injury that brought his dream of becoming a footballer to an end, resulting in Pacho kicking them out after taking their passports.
Eusebio then introduced Toro to Checho, who helped them get their money and passports back from Pacho. He also convinced them to hijack a plane for money.
While they celebrated their partnership, Toro’s gun went off, accidentally killing Checho. Despite that, Eusebio and Toro decided to execute the hijacking plan.
The hijacking, which has now been going on for 30 hours, is not going as they had planned. In the past seven hours, the plane has been denied permission to land by several countries.
It is the longest hijacking in the history of Latin America with no end in sight, as the government refuses to negotiate and the hijackers refuse to surrender.
As they are running out of fuel, Wilches makes the call to land in Peru despite not being granted permission to land.
The Peruvian Police provide them with fuel and order them to leave. Seeing no way out, Toro and Eusebio decide to end the hijacking and escape with the money they received.
They ask the police for a car, with Edie at gunpoint. This leads to a gunfight, resulting in Toro getting shot.
Meanwhile, Esguerra, the Vice Minister, threatens Pirateque and asks him to take the fall for the hijacking. Pirateque has no choice but to agree for Manchola’s sake.
Ending explained:
The hijacking comes to an end
Eusebio orders Wilches to fly them to Antofagasta. Wilches will have to land the plane in a desert, which seems like an impossible task.
Wilches decides to fly them to Bogotá instead, without informing the hijackers, and Esguerra prepares to attack the plane as soon as it lands.
Pirateque refuses to risk the lives of the crew and passengers, so he informs Wilches about Esguerra’s plan, which leads to his arrest.
While Wilches ignores Pirateque’s warning, his co-pilot, Lequerica, tells Edie about it. Even Edie’s threat to reveal his plan to the hijackers fails to dissuade Wilches.
Soon after, Eusebio, who has come to trust Bárbara, confides in her, and Bárbara realizes that Eusebio never killed the passenger he claimed he had killed.
All he did was lock him in a trapdoor. Edie and Bárbara rescue the passenger and convince Eusebio to surrender in Bogotá.
However, Toro, upon realizing that Eusebio lied to him, decides to blow up the plane with a grenade if Wilches does not turn the plane around, but even then, Wilches refuses.
Edie is forced to threaten Wilches at gunpoint, but Wilches knows that it is an empty threat, leading to her stabbing him in the thigh.
Edie then asks Lequerica to take control of the plane. She talks to Toro earnestly and convinces him to disarm the grenade now that they are not flying to Bogotá.
The truth versus Edie’s story
Lequerica takes the plane off the radar and flies Toro and Eusebio to Resistencia, just as they want.
Toro and Eusebio want to take Edie and Bárbara with them as assurance that Lequerica will not tell the authorities where they went for the next 72 hours.
However, Edie convinces them to take Wilches instead, as he is the captain and his life has more value than theirs. Wilches is forced to leave with Toro and Eusebio.
Lequerica then takes the plane to Bogotá, and the passengers as well as the crew are rescued, except Wilches, who is missing, along with the hijackers.
Lequerica, who landed the plane, Edie, and Bárbara are questioned by Esguerra, but they refuse to tell him where Wilches and the hijackers disembarked.
Edie has come up with a story to protect herself, Lequerica, and Bárbara. She tells Esguerra that Wilches was stabbed by the hijackers, rendering him incapable of flying the plane.
She also tells him that Wilches made an agreement with the hijackers: he would disembark the plane with them in exchange for the crew and passengers’ lives.
She only reveals to Esguerra where the hijackers disembarked when he threatens to separate her from her children.
The fate of the characters
Toro and Eusebio part ways in Asunción, with Toro returning to his family. Eusebio does not kill Wilches but lets him go.
Once Wilches is rescued, Esguerra questions him, and Wilches corroborates Edie’s story, as her story makes him look like a hero who sacrificed himself for others.
No longer under scrutiny, Edie reunites with her children. She is allowed to continue working at Aerobolivar despite having children until she gets fired for smuggling alcohol three years later.
Pirateque gets sentenced to 17 months in prison. He and Manchola confess their love for each other and get married before he finishes his sentence.
After being released from prison, he moves to Guaduas with Manchola. The two of them do not return to work in the aerospace industry.
Wilches is rewarded for his bravery. He continues flying until he passes away in a plane crash seven years later.
Bárbara, who had to hide her true self and name to work as a flight attendant, decides to quit her job as she gains clarity after facing death.
She flies to Brazil to meet Eusebio because she reciprocates his feelings. For the rest of the world, Eusebio has disappeared, and he is never captured.
On the other hand, Toro, who returned to Asunción and distributed the money among friends and family, gets caught.
He is extradited to Colombia, where he is sentenced to 5 years in prison. After being released, he dies in a bank robbery.
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