U.S. airline worker steals plane, takes it for flight before crashing it | Hacker News Reader

U.S. airline worker steals plane, takes it for flight before crashing it

reuters.com

37 pointseverdev13 comments

In the ATC recordings he blames it on Alaska Airlines minimum wage, saying he hopes it will "grease the gears of the higher ups".

He continuously said over ATC that his intent was to not hurt anyone, except himself. He ended up not physically hurting anyone except himself.

https://youtu.be/-GzroZxwhJg

He did crash into a populated island when there was a lot of water to choose from. Hard to tell if that was intentional or lack of skill though.

I live in Seattle and have never heard of “Ketron Island”, the location of the crash. Cursory googling shows that the 220 acre island is privately owned, and only 17 people live there. Of all the land masses to hit in the area, that one is probably the best possible if the intent was to hit Earth and injure no one but yourself.

It's got about 20 houses on it, according to Google Maps. Compare that to McNeil Island about 3 miles northwest, which is about 4400 acres and only has an abandoned prison and a small facility for sexually violent predators.

In the full ATC audio he says he thinks one of his engines is going out before the crash and only has a few hundred pounds of fuel left (started with 3000lbs). He did circles around Mt Ranier, barrel rolls over Puget Sound, and went over to the Cascades.

> lack of skill though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeYVtVg6aGs&feature=youtu.be

You see that barrel roll and subsequent dive and last second pull out? He's "played some video games" indeed. Dunno if that was skill, luck, or a beast plane, but...that was damn impressive if nothing else.

Getting it right once isn't so hard. Getting it right consistently to boot kill yourself young is hard

It's incredible that someone with no flight training can learn those maneuvers from video games.

I'd guess the percentage of people that could do it right their first time is in the low single digits.

I expected to have to say "that's not a barrel roll" but actually it was!

That's a very difficult corkscrewing manoeuvre; imagine following the seam-line of a toilet-roll tube in the air. It requires coordination of all three controls in a continuously changing manner. Much different to an aileron roll that most people mistake for a barrel.

Very impressive indeed.

The Q400 is actually a 76-person airliner.

Most airliners don't have keys, thus rely on perimeter fences for security.

This single confused airline worker is going to cause massive inconvenience for other airline employees and increased cost to US airports and operators, similar to the suicidal Germanwings co-pilot who deliberately crashed into a mountain in 2015.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525

Also, the impotence of F-15 chase planes was demonstrated.

They can follow an airliner over a populated area like Seattle, but then what? If the thief is confused and doesn't issue threats, then what?

I don’t know about impotence, but I do think this will lead to further discussion around ROEs(Rules of Engagement) for shooting down recreational and commercial aircraft used as weapons.

During 9/11 the ready birds that launched were unarmed(peace dividend reduced threat posture).

I’m sure ready birds are all armed now.

I’m not sure what level of authority is required to shoot down threat aircraft, but I think it’s safe to assume that the limited time/space requires latitude be given to flight leader.

One flight pair that launched unarmed on 9/11(including one female fighter pilot) were prepared to ram the hijcked airliner if they made it in time.

I was on a restaurant patio at the time and a plane that looked like this caught my eye and seemed out of place for some reason. It was heading more or less due south over north seattle. I've been looking for some reference to the flight path to see if it's possible I saw this plane.

I was out on the North Shore of Hood Canal (on the peninsula West of Seattle) - the turboprop went over at about 300 - 500m, just across the water (I think about 1000m) from us. Thought this was odd as we never see commercial traffic out here. Then the F15s went by, one low and trailing the plane, and one much higher... Whole thing had a super weird feeling.

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