The Note
Federal Bureau of Investigation (U.S. Federal Government). Public domain. Picture source
Soon after takeoff he hands a flight attendant a note saying he has a bomb, shows her wires and red sticks, and names his price.
November 24, 1971, Flight 305 leaves Portland at 2:50 pm
The story
The jet climbs out of Portland. The man passes an envelope to the flight attendant on the jump seat behind him. She thinks it is a phone number and puts it away. He leans over and tells her she had better read it.
The note says he has a bomb. She asks to see it. He opens the case just enough. She sees wires, a battery and red sticks. Then he tells her what he wants: $200,000 in twenty-dollar bills and four parachutes, waiting in Seattle.
In this story, the four parachutes are the cleverest part of the plan. If he asks for four, the people on the ground have to fear he will take a hostage with him. Then nobody dares give him a parachute that does not work.
He stays polite the whole time. He calls the women Miss. He smokes, he talks about the weather in Minnesota, and once he looks out the window and says they are over Tacoma. To the people around him, he seems calm. In this story, he is calm because he has rehearsed every step.
What the record says
Miss, I have a bomb here and I would like you to sit by me
The note, as given by Geoffrey Gray and quoted in HistoryLink.org Essay 1997 (sources word it slightly differently)
Cooper showed her a mass of wires and red-colored sticks.
FBI, Artifact of the Month caption for the Cooper plane ticket (2016)
I don’t have a grudge against your airline, Miss. I just have a grudge
The hijacker to flight attendant Tina Mucklow, as quoted in HistoryLink.org Essay 1997
FBI interviews with the crew, summarized in HistoryLink and in Wikipedia's citations to the FBI Vault, say the hijacker passed a note to flight attendant Florence Schaffner, showed her what looked like a bomb (red sticks, wires and a battery), and asked for $200,000 and two back and two front parachutes. Flight attendant Tina Mucklow then sat beside him and carried messages to the cockpit. The bomb was never seen again; later writers suggest the red sticks may have been road flares, but that is a guess. Why he asked for four parachutes is not recorded; the hostage idea is the reading most writers give.