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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.
They could have used their guns, not missiles (AFAIK, F15 still has a Gatling gun).
Bullets and fragments will still fall out of the sky. A round that pierces the aircraft (and MANY will) will travel miles before striking the ground, people, houses, etc. Incredibly dangerous to do so.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
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.
The M61 Vulcan IS a Gatling:
The M61 Vulcan is a hydraulically or pneumatically driven, six-barrel, air-cooled, electrically fired Gatling-style rotary cannon
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
There are no fighters based at McChord. Itâ(TM)s an Air Mobility Command base for C-17 transports.