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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.
Endanger a whole lot of other people just because you are having issues.
Between 1983 and 2003 there were 36 suicides by aircraft in the United States. All of them were by pilots who would have had access to any "ignition key". Most likely this ground crew guy would have also had access to the key. It is not like the key would be kept in an underground safe with an armed guard. Most likely the pilot would hand it off to the ground crew as they exit the plane.
Sooner or later an incident would happen, such as an emergency landing crashing into a parked plane that couldn't be moved in time because the key was unavailable. Then the FAA would require a spare key to be kept in the cockpit (maybe in the glove compartment?) for "safety".
It's no grand challenge -- don't let these swine tell you otherwise -- to build a functional interlock system for starting, flying, and landing airplanes.
"Hurr-durr it's gonna fall out of the skyyyyyyy!" just means they haven't thought long enough about the problem.
My question is: Do you think it would actually help? Surely, some echelon of non-pilot (such as perhaps this very maintenance guy from TFA) will be issued credentials that allow them to operate all systems of the aircraft otherwise maintenance would be impossible. And just as surely, such systems can be disabled.
My BMW, for 1995, has a reasonably-robust mechanical keying system and multiple anti-theft systems including RF keys to start and user-set numeric codes, pick-resistant ignition tumbler, and so on. But none of this stops a would-be thief from smashing a window, opening the hood, replacing the DME with one that lacks these electronic functions (available everywhere, because race cars are things). Bypassing the steering lock is as simple as drilling a hole in just the right spot in the magnesium housing for the steering column right behind the steering wheel (easy -- I got it on the first try in a dark parking lot with a pictures on a cell phone as a guide and drew zero attention) which lets the locking parts fall out.
The rest is just hotwiring it exactly like a car from the 1950s, and all of the right connections are there at the ignition switch to do that.
My car is old in car years, but it isn't all that old in airplane years.
Kid-proof tablet..