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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
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.
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".
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.
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
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.
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..
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.