FBI seeks motive after U.S. airline worker steals plane, crashes it

A Horizon Air ground service agent got into a Bombardier Q400 turboprop aircraft on Friday night in a maintenance area at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and took off, Horizon sister carrier Alaska Airlines said.

He flew for about one hour, often erratically with attempts at aerial stunts, before crashing onto sparsely populated Ketron Island in Puget Sound, some 25 miles (40 km) to the southwest.

The 29-year-old man, who has not been officially identified, was suicidal and appeared to have acted alone, according to authorities. He was believed to have been killed in the crash.

Relatives and co-workers identified the man as Richard Russell of Sumner, Washington, who also went by the name Beebo.

“He was a faithful husband, a loving son, and a good friend,” the Russell family said in a statement.

“This is a complete shock to us. We are devastated by these events and Jesus is truly the only one holding this family together right now,” the family said.

Russell was not known to have had a pilot’s licence, Horizon Air Chief Executive Gary Beck said at a news conference, and it was not clear how he was able to take off and fly as he did.

“There were some manoeuvres that were done that were incredible manoeuvres with the aircraft,” Beck said. “Commercial aircraft are complex machines. They’re not as easy to fly as, say, a Cessna 150, so I don’t know how he achieved the experience that he did,” Beck said.

The local sheriff’s department said on Twitter that either doing stunts “or lack of flying skills” caused the crash.

In partial recordings of Russell’s conversations with air traffic controllers that were published online by Broadcastify.com, he said he was sorry to disappoint people who cared about him and described himself as a “broken guy.”
Source: https://uk.reuters.com

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