Our Pick
Posted on @rawstates
"Sky King": the stolen Horizon Air Q400
August 10, 2018
Sea-Tac to Ketron Island, Puget Sound, Washington
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Richard Russell, a 28-year-old Horizon Air ground agent with no flight training, towed an empty Dash 8 to a runway at Sea-Tac and took off. Two F-15s were scrambled from Portland and went supersonic getting there, and air traffic control talked with him for most of the hour and a quarter he was up. He flew around Mount Rainier, came back over the Sound, and managed a barrel roll over the southern Puget Sound, a hard manoeuvre for a trained pilot, pulling out low over the water. Minutes later he put the aircraft into the trees on Ketron Island. He was the only person aboard and the only person hurt; investigators ruled the final descent intentional. He called himself a broken guy with a few screws loose, asked the controller whether Alaska Airlines would give him a job if he landed it, and apologised to the people who would have to deal with the aftermath.
That was 1 of the hidden places.
Sky King takes off 7:32 pm: Runway 16C, Seattle-Tacoma International. · Around Mount Rainier ~7:48 pm: He dropped off radar and reappeared having flown around the mountain. The track is known in outline, not to a point, so this is the peak he circled. · The Olympics in the window ~8:30 pm: Talking to the tower, he mentioned seeing the Olympic range out of the cockpit. This pin is what he was looking at, not where he was: he was out over the Sound to the east. · Barrel roll ~8:40 pm: Over southern Puget Sound, pulling out low over the water. Sources place the manoeuvre in this stretch of water without fixing a point, so this pin is the area, not a position. · Crashed 8:43 pm: Ketron Island, Pierce County.
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