Horizon Air Worker Steals and Crashes a Q400 Turboprops Plane Near Seattle

[kellyhound]

Officials said a 29-year-old Horizon Air employee took off from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and crashed in Pierce County. No other passengers or crew appeared to be onboard.

A Horizon Air worker took off Friday night in one of the airline’s Q400 turboprops at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and crashed on an island in south Puget Sound after being coaxed by air-traffic control to try to land and trailed by two fighter jets, officials said.

The plane was taken by a 29-year-old Sumner man about 8 p.m. and crashed on Ketron Island, near Steilacoom, about 90 minutes later, according to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department. No passengers or crew appeared to be aboard the 76-seat plane.

The Sheriff’s Department said it was “not a terrorist incident.” The plane crashed either while the man was doing stunts or because of a lack of flying skills, according to the Sheriff’s Department.

“A joyride gone terribly wrong,” Pierce County Sheriff Paul Pastor said during a news conference in Steilacoom, which is about 3 miles from the island.

No injuries were reported on the ground, Pastor said, as the plane crashed and started an intense fire on the wooded, 230-acre island, which has a population of 20. He said it appeared the man who took the plane died.

Horizon Air COO Constance von Muehlen said in a late-night video that “our hearts are with the family of the individual onboard as well as all our Alaska Air and Horizon Air employees.”

She said she believed the plane had been taken by “a single Horizon Air employee” and that no other passengers or crew were onboard. The employee was a “ground service agent,” according to Alaska Airlines.

On a live air-traffic control feed, the person flying the plane could be heard talking with an air-traffic controller who addressed him as Rich and Richard.

Rich seemed excited as he spoke, though also carefree and wild.

At one point he explained he had put some gas in the plane “to go check out the Olympics… and uh, yeah.”

Later, he began to worry about his fuel.

“I’m down to 2,100 (pounds),” he told the ATC. “I started at 30 something. … I don’t know what the burnage is like on takeoff, but it burned quite a bit faster than I expected.”

The air-traffic controller responded calmly, seeming not to want to upset Rich as the conversation continued and he tried to coax Rich into landing somewhere.

"There is the runway just off to your right side in about a mile,” the controller told him. “That’s McChord” (meaning the military airfield at Joint Base Lewis-McChord).

“Oh man,” Rich immediately responded, “Those guys will rough me up if I try and land there. I think I might mess something up there too. I wouldn’t want to do that. They probably have anti-aircraft.”

“They don’t have any of that stuff,” the air-traffic controller said. “We’re just trying to find a place for you to land safely.”

“I’m not quite ready to bring it down just yet,” Rich said. “But holy smokes, I got to stop looking at the fuel, because it’s going down quick.”

“Could you start a left turn and we’ll take you down to the SE, please,” the air-traffic controller then asked.

“This is probably jail time for life, huh?” said Rich. “I would hope it is for a guy like me.”

“Oh, Richard,” said the controller, “We’re not going to worry or think about that. But could you start a left turn please?”

At another point, Rich said, “I’ve got a lot of people that care about me. It’s going to disappoint them to hear that I did this. I would like to apologize to each and every one of them. Just a broken guy, got a few screws loose, I guess. Never really knew it, until now.”

An exchange between Rich and the controller not long before the plane crashed, perhaps the final exchange, was recorded by Aviation journalist Jon Ostrower at 8:47 p.m. and posted to his Air Current website.

“I feel like one of my engines is going out or something,” Rich says.

“OK, Rich,” the controller responded. “If you could, you just want to keep that plane right over the water. Keep the aircraft nice and low.”

Gov. Jay Inslee said in a statement that fighter pilots from the Air National Guard in Oregon and Washington flew alongside the plane “ready to do whatever was needed to protect us.”

Royal King of Mukilteo was photographing a wedding at Lake Steilacoom when he saw a low-flying plane and two F-15 fighter jets trailing it. He knew something was off, he said Friday night.

He then saw the two jets come back around toward him, but not the plane. He didn’t hear the crash, but saw smoke.

"It was unfathomable, it was something out of a movie,” he said. “The smoke lingered. You could still hear the F-15s, which were flying low.”

He said he was shaken by what he saw, and what he heard afterward.

“That’s somebody’s son or husband or daughter. This is a tragedy,” he said.

Flights from Sea-Tac were temporarily grounded but normal operations resumed around 9:30 p.m. At the Alaska Airlines terminal, it was a hushed Friday night. Lines were modest and most flights were on time.

Compi vid.

[durt]

Audio transcript, with captions

[mattersin]

Dude will go down as a legend. "Think i can do a barrel roll in this thing?" *video shows massive plane doing barrel roll* ������

[Meridian]

He went out in style I guess and didn’t hurt anyone else. Just took an entire plane with him.

Sad listening to him. He was basing it all on playing video games. Not bad.

[richy_dong]

thing is he didn't even sound like a bad guy

[Kanda444]

i listened to this this morning....dude is kinda my hero now.

[fredy]

Ah, minimum wage. We'll chalk it up to that. Maybe that will grease the gears a little bit to the higher-ups

What was the question they asked that made him say this? They edited it out.

Sounds like they asked why did he take an airplane for a joyride? His few loose screws version of sticking it to the man?

[AceBoon]

FBI Seeks Motive After US Airline Worker Stole Plane and Crashed It

"Federal authorities on Saturday were seeking to learn what drove an airline worker to steal an empty airplane from Seattle’s airport in a security scare that caused the scrambling of U.S. fighter jets and ended when the plane crashed onto a sparsely populated island.
A Horizon Air ground service agent got into a Bombardier Q400 turboprop aircraft on Friday night in a maintenance area at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and took off, Horizon sister carrier Alaska Airline said.
He flew for about one hour, often erratically, before crashing on Ketron Island in Puget Sound, about 25 miles to the southwest.
The 29-year-old man, who has not been named, was suicidal and appeared to have acted alone, according to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, which said the employee was believed to have been killed in the crash.
“Doing stunts in air or lack of flying skills caused crash into Island,” the Sheriff’s Department said on Twitter.
In partial recordings of his conversations with air traffic controllers that were published online by Broadcastify.com, the man said he was sorry to disappoint people who cared about him and described himself as a “broken guy.”
“Got a few screws loose, I guess,” he is heard saying in the recording. “Never really knew it until now.”
Air Alaska maintenance workers walk through terminal following incident where airline employee took off in an airplane, Seattle, Washington on Aug. 10, 2018. (REUTERS/Brendan McDermid)
The Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Transportation Safety Board were investigating the incident.
“Until the FBI has the opportunity to get better background on the person, find out what motive they had, it’s a little too early to make a determination on what the objective was,” Debra Eckrote, the NTSB’s western Pacific region chief, said at a news conference.
Two F-15 fighter jets took to the air from a base in Portland, Oregon, and were on the scene within minutes. The jets were armed but did not open fire, North American Aerospace Defense Command spokesman Cameron Hillier said by phone.
Instead, the F-15 pilots and air traffic controllers tried to guide the plane west, away from populated areas, said Hillier. No one was hurt on the ground, authorities said.
It was unclear how the employee was able to taxi the plane on a runway and take off without authorization.
“We’re working to find out everything we possibly can about what happened,” Brad Tilden, chief executive of Alaska Air Group, said in a statement.
The Bombardier Q400 turboprop is designed for short-distance flights and can seat 76 passengers, Alaska Air said." -By Reuters

[AceBoon]

Sorry the audio wasn't playing in the video. This one has audio.

[RogerSmithLikesDrugs]

Better without audio, always some bitches