Security fears over mechanic’s suicide flight
US airlines under scrutiny after airport worker steals passenger jet and crashes it into island near Seattle
INVESTIGATORS were yesterday attempting to understand how a young mechanic was able to steal an empty passenger plane from Seattle’s main airport, fly for more than an hour doing aerobatic tricks and then crash into a forest, killing himself.
The FBI, National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration were all puzzling over how the 29-year-old ground service agent for the airline Horizon Air managed to seize the plane, a twin engine turboprop Q400.
The 76-seat plane took off from Seattle-Tacoma Airport, in the northwestern US state of Washington, on Friday night. Two F-15 fighter jets were soon scrambled when the alarm was raised.
Attempts were made via radio to convince the pilot, named locally as Richard Russell, who had worked for the airline for three years, to land. Ultimately, he crashed into Ketron Island, a sparsely populated area of the state.
Recordings of the conversation between him and the control tower captured him sounding excitable, saying he had “a few screws loose” and apologising to his relatives. Pierce County Sheriff ’s office ruled out terrorism, but Ed Troyer, who works there, described the man as being “suicidal”. The White House said in a statement that Donald Trump, the US president, had been briefed on the incident.
It has raised questions about airline security at America’s major airports after the mechanic was able to board the plane, taxi on to the runway and take off without being stopped.
Aviation experts questioned what the authorities would have been able to do had the pilot been determined to fly into a city rather than loop-the-loop. Some asked whether there should be annual mental health checks for all those employed in the airline industry.
Investigators will want to obtain camera footage from the airport, which hosts more than 30 airlines with nonstop services to more than 90 domestic destinations, to understand how the man was able to seize the plane.
They will also try to find the cockpit voice recorder, to see if the man made any phone calls or spoke to himself during the flight.
Audio of his conversation with the control tower emerged yesterday. At one point a voice in the control tower says: “Congratulations, you did that, now let’s turn around that aeroplane safely and not hurt anybody on the ground.” The pilot responds: “All right. Oh damn it, I don’t know man. I don’t want to. I was kind of hoping that was going to be it, you know.”
In another clip the man claims to have put fuel in the plane “to go check out the Olympics” – a reference to the Olympic Mountains about 100 miles away. But he feared the fuel was going “quite a bit faster than I expected.”
The man is later heard saying: “This is probably like jail time for life, huh? I would hope it is for a guy like me.” Elsewhere, according to the Seattle
Times, he says: “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 apologise to each and every one of them. Just a broken guy, got a few screws loose, I guess. Never really knew it until now.”
Social media had footage of the aircraft doing a large loop-the-loop in a clear sky as the sun was setting. John Waldron, a witness, said: “I thought they were practising for an air show to be perfectly honest. I had no idea at the time that the aircraft had been stolen from Sea-Tac.”
Aviation experts speculated that the man must have had some flying experience, either in real life or on a computer simulator, to have got the plane into the air. Nick Junka, who said he had worked with the mechanic, said: “We have access to these planes all day long. We secure them. This is the most outlandish thing. I worked with this guy. He was a good guy …. I would never have dreamed of this individual doing this. Never.”
Discussing motives, Sheriff Paul Pastor said: “Most terrorists don’t do loops over the water. This might have been a joyride gone terribly wrong.” Constance von Muehlen, Horizon’s chief operating officer, said in a video statement: “Our hearts are with the family of the individual aboard as well as all our Alaska Air and Horizon Air employees.”
‘I’ve got a lot of people that care about me. It’s going to disappoint them to hear that I did this’