Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

Abagnale continues to study airline protocol by walking around La Guardia Airport in his Pan Am copilot uniform. He specifically chooses this airport over New York’s Kennedy Airport because Pan Am is not based there. He hangs out with pilots, keeping track of the terms they use in a notebook Frank always carries with him. He also dates stewardesses in order to learn about airline operations.

After months of research, Abagnale deadheads a flight with Eastern Airlines to Miami. He performs convincingly throughout the flight, but feels nervous. He fumbles a bit through his initial deadheads, including a flight to Dallas that garners suspicion because Pan Am doesn’t fly out of Dallas. His confidence increases with experience, however, and he continues traveling in this manner, passing bad checks and deadheading from city to city.

Abagnale muses that his scams were facilitated, in large part, by the culture of 1960s hotels and airlines, one based around an implicit trust of men in uniform. He reflects that his crimes could never have been carried out in the present day, that airline security was much laxer before terrorist attacks. Even the detectives attempting to track him down could do little beyond follow protocol, as he was constantly flying beyond their jurisdiction.