He stole a 76-seat Bombardier Q400 from Seattle-Tacoma Airport. Two NORAD F-15s scrambled from Portland. He was in contact with Air Traffic Control, apologized to his family. Said he was unwilling to land at a military base because "they would rough me up". Directed out over the Pacific by the fighters, crashed on an uninhabited island in Puget Sound.
A witness claimed he did a loop-de-loop but I didn't see it in his video.
I am completely convinced that suicidal depression can always be cured.
He had all the proper security credentials. He had been working his shift and was believed to still be in uniform. The baggage handler didn't seem out of place at all — until he was taxiing down the runway and taking off in a stolen passenger plane.
Media outlets identified him as Richard Russell, a 27-year-old who sparked a combination of amazement and fear as he flew — alone — a 76-seat Horizon Air Q400 plane for more than an hour before it crashed on a wooded area on Ketron Island south of Seattle.
He did a barrel roll. A daring swoop. Officials said they didn't believe he even had a pilot's license. "Incredible," Horizon Air President and Chief Executive Gary Beck said Saturday.
But investigators are still trying to understand why he decided to take the plane for a what appeared to be joy ride Friday evening from the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
The act also reignited discussions about airport and aviation security, with Alaska Airlines Chairman and CEO Brad Tilden repeating several times Saturday that passenger and employee safety was — and is — the company's primary concern.
Also at CNN.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12 2018, @06:40PM (4 children)
I hadn't heard the Trump quote in your sig and just read up about its origins. I'm really stoked that even if he's a psychopathic, racist, climate-change denying orange baboon - this may be the best US president as long as I can remember back.
I found this hillarious article "reporting" about the quote-originating Putin/Trump meet in Finland. So Trump goes on the world stage and says basically "sorry for my predecessors getting this wrong, but when in doubt, I'll choose peace" and Clinton-partisan media outlets call him out as a traitor? That's the most honest perspective on the US political establishment's own ideas of how the world should be that I've ever read (apart from Hillary's character-establishing "just drone him" remark).
Signed,
some dude from Europe now shopping for a MAGA-hat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12 2018, @08:09PM
Whoops, forgot the link [thedailybeast.com]. It's an entertaining read, 5 stars, would get trolled again.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12 2018, @09:22PM
Careful, could get yourself unpersoned real quick there.
(Score: 2) by julian on Monday August 13 2018, @01:45AM (1 child)
Western Democracies can no more have peace with Putin than you can have "peace" with the termites in your walls. We want fundamentally different things.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 13 2018, @03:00AM
Which one is the termite? The US has been looking like a termite in the wood of world peace since the end of the Cold War. It has no end of paranoid propaganda.