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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.

4 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Jackass by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Endanger a whole lot of other people just because you are having issues.

    Give the guy a break. At least he used an empty plane. Better than EgyptAir 990, or Malaysia 370. Those guys took hundreds of innocent lives.

  2. Re: Next step by ScentCone · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There's also the easy access to things like firearms that can be both fast and effective at suicide which we can't do much about because the 2nd amendment people don't give a crap about how many people are killed by their firearms as long as they can have their dick compensator.

    So, you get done explaining how resourceful people are at finding ways to kill themselves (and, by explaining that guns are "fast," seem to be implying that getting crushed on the pavement of the freeway after a jump isn't?), and then suggest that people who want to retain the right to defend themselves are responsible for the behavior of people who want to kill themselves? Even if you were willing to amend the constitution and take away everyone's right to self defense (though of course, not take away millions of guns in the possession of criminals who don't care what you think), do you really think that would stop the thousands of drownings, hangings, wrist-slittings, ODs, jumps, asphyxiations, and all the rest, rather than actually INCREASE the number of those things?

    Meanwhile, in a vain attempt to control people's agonized decisions to end their lives by controlling objects (but only for law-abiding people, the overwhelming majority of which never hurt themselves or anyone else with a gun), you're willing to prevent, say, my 5'2" wife from being able to defend herself because you think "those 2nd amendment people" (who are actually, you know, "Bill of Rights people). Such defensive uses of personal firearms occur hundreds of thousands of times every year, preventing and stopping violent crime. But you'd like to take away that means of self defense, and gamble on people bent on ending their own lives suddenly becoming less resourceful than they've been for all of human history. No, your actual agenda has nothing to do with suicide. Just be honest about it.

    --
    Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
  3. Re: Next step by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Forcing an ignition key system is not that hard either - car thieves do it all the time.

    The phrase belt and suspenders comes to mind. Another is defense in depth.

    You don't add a layer just for fun, but if the layer adds a significant amount of protection then maybe it is worth it.

  4. Re: Next step by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1, Insightful

    > No where in the constitution nor in any of the amendments is there a right to individual gun ownership specified.

    BZZZT. Thanks for playing.

    The right is explicit, implicit, AND intrinsic.

    1. Explicit: What part of 2nd Amendment do you not know how to fucking read???

    A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

      Furthermore,

    The Second Amendment was based partially on the right to keep and bear arms in English common law and was influenced by the English Bill of Rights of 1689. Sir William Blackstone described this right as an auxiliary right, supporting the natural rights of self-defense and resistance to oppression, and the civic duty to act in concert in defense of the state.

    2. Implicit: At the time of writing, (unloaded) gun ownership was NOT prohibited by the states; ergo, it is reserved to the people. What part of the and 10th Amendment do you not understand???

    The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

    3. Intrinsic: Governments derive their power FROM the governed. Meaning the people had the right in the FIRST place. From the Declaration of Independence:

    We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed,

    QED.

    Learn to fucking read next time.