Season 1
6 episodes Apr 10, 2024 6.4
Overview
After a plane is hijacked, two flight attendants must outwit their assailants amid intense negotiations in the air and on the ground. Based on real events.
Seasons
1 listed- Status
- Ended
- Seasons
- 1 season
- Episodes
- 6 episodes
- First aired
- Apr 10, 2024
- Last aired
- Apr 10, 2024
- Network
- Netflix
Latest episode: S1 E6 The Woman Who Knew Too Much (Apr 10, 2024)
Cast
12 people
Reviews
5 min readThe Sky as a Cage: How The Hijacking of Flight 601 Turns a Plane Into a Pressure Cooker
I’ve always thought of airplanes as the last truly neutral spaces—places where strangers are crammed together in a fragile metal tube, suspended between departure and arrival, with nothing to do but pretend they’re not all thinking the same thing: What if something goes wrong? The Hijacking of Flight 601 doesn’t just ask that question; it locks the door, turns up the heat, and forces us to live inside the answer for six hours.
The series, based on the real 1973 hijacking of a Colombian airliner, is less about the mechanics of the crime than about the slow unraveling of human dignity under pressure. The hijackers—two Paraguayan men with a mix of political grievances and personal desperation—aren’t mustache-twirling villains. They’re messy, inconsistent, and sometimes absurdly polite, like guests who’ve overstayed their welcome but still say por favor when they demand another drink.
The real tension comes from the flight attendants, Edilma (Mónica Lopera) and María Eugenia (Ángela Cano), who are caught between professional duty and the gnawing fear that no one on the ground actually knows how to get them out alive.
What’s striking about the series is how little it relies on the usual hijacking tropes. There are no dramatic shootouts, no last-minute heroics, no swelling orchestral score to tell us when to feel afraid. Instead, the fear seeps in through the small details: the way Edilma’s hands tremble when she pours coffee, the hijackers’ increasingly frayed patience as the hours drag on, the way the passengers’ initial bravado curdles into resentment.
The plane itself becomes a character—a claustrophobic, overheated microcosm where every decision, no matter how small, feels like it could tip the balance between survival and disaster.
The series’ greatest strength is its refusal to simplify. The hijackers aren’t monsters, but they’re not sympathetic either. The authorities on the ground are neither incompetent nor infallible.
Audience Opinions
Audience 6.8/10
"A tense, character-driven hijacking drama with stylish period craft and engaging leads, undercut by uneven pacing and debatable creative liberties with the true story."
Suspenseful sequences inside the plane, committed performances from the flight attendants and crew, and a well-realized 1970s atmosphere make the story compelling and emotionally engaging. Production values, including cinematography, music, and set design, receive frequent praise, and the blend of drama, tension, humor, and social commentary lands well for many. latestnetflix.com's take is that Criticism centers on stretches that feel slow or padded, some unnecessary romantic and political detours, a relatively soft or odd-feeling ending, and a sense that liberties with the real events and a few implausible character choices weaken authenticity.
What viewers praise
- Sustained tension The hijacking setup creates a claustrophobic, suspenseful atmosphere with several genuinely gripping sequences that keep attention focused on what happens next.
- Strong performances The two flight attendants in particular are singled out as scene-stealers, with the cockpit crew and several supporting characters adding personality and emotional weight.
- Convincing period setting Cinematography, production design, costumes, and overall visual texture convincingly evoke the early 1970s and give the series a polished, cinematic look.
- Memorable music The soundtrack reinforces the era and mood, adding a nostalgic, emotional layer without overwhelming the story.
- Blend of tones The story balances drama, suspense, touches of comedy, and social themes, with some viewers appreciating that the hijackers and authorities are portrayed in shades of grey rather than as simple heroes or villains.
Common complaints
- Inconsistent pacing Several viewers feel the series drags in places, especially mid-run, with certain episodes or stretches described as too slow or rhythm-breaking.
- Distracting subplots Romantic threads and an extended revolutionary angle are often seen as unnecessary additions that pull focus away from the core hijacking narrative.
- Soft or odd ending The resolution is described as underwhelming or strangely handled compared to the intensity built up earlier, leaving some feeling it could have ended more powerfully.
- Questionable realism Creative liberties with the historical events and some character decisions strike a portion of the audience as implausible or overly dramatized, diluting the sense of a true-story reenactment.
- Translation issues for some At least one detailed account complains about poor subtitle translation and censored dialogue in English, which makes the writing feel flatter and less precise than it is in the original language.
Recommended for
True hijacking story buffs Latin American drama fans Character-focused thriller viewers Retro 1970s vibe lovers Suspenseful limited series binges
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsThey were soccer players, not revolutionaries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMQlTunK8Lw
Netflix's The Hijacking of Flight 601 landed on April 10, 2024. Six Spanish-language episodes from C.S. Prince and Pablo Gonzalez, the pair who made The Great Heist. Tudum sold it as the May 30, 1973, SAM Colombia skyjacking, one of the longest in Latin American mileage and time. The official trailer still calls the gunmen armed revolutionaries who will shoot one passenger per hour. Massimo Di Ricco wrote Los Condenados del Aire, the book the series leans on. He says that political costume was a decoy. latestnetflix.com's take is that Francisco Solano Lopez and Eusebio Borja were Paraguayan forwards who had bounced through Ecuador, failed to stick as soccer players in Colombia, and needed cash.They told the captain they were ELN. Di Ricco's line is blunt. "But they didn't really care about any of that." 
Forty-three seats. Eighty-four bodies.
The series flies a fictional airline, Aerobolivar, with 43 passengers and a boardroom hero named Pirateque. Film Fugitives could not find Pirateque in Di Ricco's reporting. The real ship was SAM's Lockheed Electra HK-1274. Collider, working from Di Ricco and the BBC, puts 84 people on board, passengers plus crew. The flight did start in Bogota, then Cali, then Pereira, where the masked pair boarded. The show collapses that into a Bogota departure. Edilma Perez, played by Monica Lopera, and Maria Eugenia Gallo, Angela Cano's Barbara, were real attendants. In life they joined during a crew swap, Edilma asking the company to send her friend. The trailer makes it look like they left Bogota together.
President Misael Pastrana Borrero refused to deal. "We will not negotiate with seditionists or outlaws," he said, a line Tudum reprints. SAM eventually handed over $50,000 of the $200,000 demand. The plane hopscotched Aruba, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, Argentina. About 60 hours. More than 10,000 miles on Tudum's count, 13,000 on Collider's. Women and children walked off in Aruba. Cyclists, like the ones the series keeps, got out too. Some passengers just opened an emergency door and jumped onto the tarmac. Borja dropped off in Resistencia and has never been found. Solano got arrested days later. When the Electra rolled into Buenos Aires, the hijackers were already gone.
Decider called STREAM IT, then wondered if the thriller-soap mix would hold for six hours. Common Sense flagged the sexism and the language. IMDb sits around 6.7. Juan Pablo Raba, late of Narcos, turns up as Checho. Enrique Carriazo plays the invented Pirateque, which is where a lot of the ground-side soap lives. That is the gossip. Netflix bought a 1973 soccer-player heist, dressed it as revolution, cut the passenger count almost in half, and built a company man the book does not name. The real Borja is still missing. The trailer is the fiction.
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.
Similar Series
Related series ranked by rating and popularity.
