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Seattle Airport Employee Steals Airplane, Crashes It Into the Ground (latimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Los Angeles Times:
An airline worker stole an empty Alaska Airlines plane from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Washington on Friday night, and the National Guard scrambled two fighter jets to chase the aircraft, which crashed on a sparsely populated island in Puget Sound, officials said. No passengers were aboard the 76-seat Horizon Air Q400 turboprop plane, which was stolen by a 29-year-old Horizon Air ground service agent from Pierce County, according to airline and law enforcement officials.... The man was described as suicidal, and it appeared impossible that he could have survived the crash....
The plane made an unauthorized takeoff from the airport around 8 p.m. and crashed on Ketron Island, about five miles southwest of Tacoma, after the renegade pilot bantered erratically with air-traffic controllers who pleaded with him to land the plane, according to officials and dispatch audio. "This is probably jail time for life, huh?" said the man, identified on the radio as Rich, according to dispatch audio reviewed by the Seattle Times.... At another point, the employee said: "I'm gonna land it, in a safe kind of manner. I think I'm gonna try to do a barrel roll, and if that goes good, I'm just gonna nose down and call it a night...."
"Oh, my God! Oh, my God! He's OK? He's OK," one woman said in a video posted on Facebook, which showed at least one military jet in pursuit. It's not clear how long afterward the plane crashed.
The plane made an unauthorized takeoff from the airport around 8 p.m. and crashed on Ketron Island, about five miles southwest of Tacoma, after the renegade pilot bantered erratically with air-traffic controllers who pleaded with him to land the plane, according to officials and dispatch audio. "This is probably jail time for life, huh?" said the man, identified on the radio as Rich, according to dispatch audio reviewed by the Seattle Times.... At another point, the employee said: "I'm gonna land it, in a safe kind of manner. I think I'm gonna try to do a barrel roll, and if that goes good, I'm just gonna nose down and call it a night...."
"Oh, my God! Oh, my God! He's OK? He's OK," one woman said in a video posted on Facebook, which showed at least one military jet in pursuit. It's not clear how long afterward the plane crashed.
Reports say he was airborne for 90 minutes, performing 'stunts' before he went 'nose down'. A friend hear the radio chatter from the 'pilot' in real-time before he took his life.
News 'analysts' are already wondering why the two fighter jets didn't shoot down the stolen craft, which points out the limits of their understanding - firing missiles in a residential area to destroy a plane so debris can rain down is typically considered a bad idea, better to observe and be prepared to take action if it looks like he was going to hurt others.
I can't wait to hear we need to regulate who can buy flight simulator software to spare further 'copy-cat' tragedies!
Ken
Probably not. They scrambled F-15s out of Portland (don't know if they have anything closer at JBLM or Whidbey). Optimistically, they got on scene in 5 minutes. Some pilots are saying more like 10. People along I-5 would probably have heard sonic booms. But Seattle is closer than 5 minutes flying time from SeaTac for a commuter plane.
Hanford is much further. But this guy was having low fuel issues, so he probably would never have made Hanford regardless.
Have gnu, will travel.
Let's look at the facts:
1. In America, suicides are twice as common as homicides.
2. Only 10% of people that survive a suicide attempt go on to successfully kill themselves in later attempts.
3. Women are more likely to attempt suicide, but men are more likely to succeed (in America, 3 dead men for every woman). China is the only country in the world where the female suicide death rate exceeds the male rate.
3. Guns are not the most common method for attempting suicide. But in America they are the most common method of successful suicides. Drug overdose is the most common method, but is only successful 3% of the time. Gun suicides are successful 85% of the time.
4. Gun owning households have significantly higher suicide rates.
5. Gun suicides, in particular, tend to be "on impulse" rather than planned.
6. The TYPE of gun matters. Handguns are used in suicides much more often than either rifles or shotguns.
It is unlikely that people using guns to kill themselves would have done so successfully with a different method, since other methods require more planning and preparation, and have much higher failure rates.
If you choose to keep a gun in your home, you should choose a rifle or shotgun (I own one of each), not a handgun. Keep it locked.
Guns and suicide
Guns, suicide, and public policy
List of countries by suicide rate
Citation needed.
Seems to me that most any murder-suicide by plane would have a higher body count than even the deadliest murder-suicide by firearms. While we're at it we can compare this to murder-suicide by bombs, cars, poison gas, or whatever else the insane have come up with.
Seems to me that the lesson here is we should be looking to put criminals in prisons and the insane in mental hospitals instead of trying to bubblewrap the world.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.