May 3, 1980. This is the date that Renato Ventosa remembers as the day he did not believe in the plan that one of his best friends told him. They were only 16 years old and part of a group of young people studying UFO sightings. It was a Saturday afternoon, they were at Rui Rodrigues’ house, when Renato heard Rui reveal what he had prepared. It was called “Operation TAP” and it had a very simple objective: to divert a plane to Madrid.
Renato Ventosa was not the only confidant of the plan, but none of the friends gathered that Saturday afternoon at Rui’s house in Feijó believed that it was serious. He was not a criminal. He didn’t even get in trouble. In fact, he had never slept outside the house. None of them had been on a plane. Rui Rodrigues was just an ordinary young man from the 1980s who, like the vast majority at the time, was curious about unusual phenomena. Besides, he was only 16 years old. Everyone who heard the story thought he was just talking for the sake of talking.
Rui even showed them the weapon he intended to use to carry out the kidnapping. It was hidden in a drawer and his father had found it in the back seat of the taxi he was driving. He also showed them the plane ticket he had already bought, a seat for TAP flight 131 to Faro. But nothing convinced them that it was actually serious.
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Source: Observadora
