“We’ve confirmed a Horizon Air Q400 that had an unauthorised takeoff from SeaTac around 8pm has gone down near Ketron Island in Pierce County, WA. “Our hearts are with the family of the individual aboard as well as all of our Alaska Air and Horizon Air employees.”Īlaska Airlines confirmed the crash shortly after the plane went down. “We believe it (the plane) was taken by a single Horizon Air employee and no other passengers or crew were on board,” she said. Horizon Air CEO Constance Van Muehlen issued a video statement describing the incident. No others involved.” Sheriff Troyer confirmed that there were “no passengers on the plane” when it crashed. “Confirmed info … this is a single suicide male. “This is not a terrorist incident,” Ed Troyer with the Pierce County Sheriff’s office wrote on Twitter. Never really knew it until now.”Īn airline employee “conducted an unauthorised takeoff” of an aeroplane carrying no passengers, then “crashed in south Puget Sound,” Sea-Tac Airport officials said on Twitter. Just a broken guy, got a few screws loose, I guess. “I would like to apologise to each and every one of them. It’s going to disappoint them to hear that I did this,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of people that care about me. “This is probably jail time for life, huh?” he later said, according to a recording published by The Seattle Times. (Video: Skylar Jacboson) /0UL7Dkk42V- KOMO News August 11, 2018Īudio confirms Mr Russell joked with traffic controllers about “going to jail” during the short flight as F15s chased him. WATCH: Video shows Stolen Horizon Airlines Q400 do loop in air and fly low to ground and water before crashing **VIDEO WARNING*** EXPLICIT LANGUAGE! They probably have anti-aircraft,” he responds. The control tower then urged him to land at a nearby military base. I was kind of hoping that was going to be it, you know.”ĭuring the conversation, the man says he had put some fuel in the plane “to go check out the Olympics” - the Olympic Mountains which lie about 160km away.īut he later worried he was running low, saying the fuel had burned “quite a bit faster than I expected.” “Let’s turn around the airplane and land it and not hurt anybody on the ground.” “Congratulations, you did it,” the control tower tells him, according to an audio feed aired on CNN. In a conversation with the control tower, the pilot came across as excitable, confused and even apologetic. Flames lit up the night as they spread from the burning wreckage to nearby trees. The crash sparked a fire in the dense forest. Video taken by a bystander showed the passenger plane making an unlikely upside-down aerial loop, then flying low over Puget Sound before crashing into the sparsely populated island. Local officials said the jets “were not involved in the crash”.Ĭaught on video, the chase started at about 7.30pm local time and ended when the turboprop 76-seater aircraft crashed on Ketron island, around 50km southwest of Seattle. Sheriff Pastor confirmed via Twitter that the man was acting alone when he made the unauthorised flight and was chased by F15 fighter planes. Mr Russell was studying for a degree in social sciences from Washington State University and had dreams of joining the military, according to The Sun. “So if the person has basic understanding - from what I understand he was support personnel, ground personnel - they probably do have at least a basic understanding on how to start the aircraft.” “They don’t necessarily use a key, so there’s switches that they use to start the aircraft,” she said. We're working to confirm who was on board, we believe there were no guests or crew on board other than the person operating the plane.â Alaska Airlines August 11, 2018ĭebra Eckrot from the local office of the National Transportation Safety Board said it is possible to start the plane for someone with some basic knowledge. We've confirmed a Horizon Air Q400 that had an unauthorized takeoff from SeaTac around 8pm has gone down near Ketron Island in Pierce County, WA.
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