Stolen and looped

Interesting to watch the talking heads and "aviation experts" ask "How could this happen?"

IMHO. You can't stop an isolated, unforseen event like this without instituting draconian rules.

As Webb says, "Life's tough, wear a cup."

As an airline employee you don’t go through TSA to get onto the AOA because you’re not going on a flight. If you are going to take a flight as a standby passenger after work you have to go out and come back through the checkpoint just like everyone else. As far as locks on cockpits that also is for in-flight, not ground ops. Mechanics know how to start engines, they do it all the time. Virtually every airliner that is parked overnight has a stack of deferred squawks that need to get fixed, you can’t lock maintenance people out. Everyone with a SIDA badge has had a background check including this guy. Apparently up until Friday evening he wasn’t nuts and we don’t have anything that can predict who is going to snap or when. We don’t have any idea what caused this guy to go over the edge. Could just as easily be the guy with the keys if we add another level of knee jerk security.

Now as for the “lncredible maneuvers” um, he tried to do a barrel roll and botched it pretty good as he came out heading the opposite way he went in. I can guarantee you that every kid who has ever played a flight sim game has done some form of sloppy barrel roll. Pretty sure they’ve all tried to fly inverted under the Golden Gate Bridge too. He just happened to have enough altitude (barely) to pull it off so in that sense and the fact that it got recorded, it was pretty spectacular.

What sets this guy apart however is his apparent complete lack of evil intent or anger and his benign chatty nature. If he could have pulled off a landing would we really have locked him up for life?

And what happens when we start doing interplanetary/interstellar travel on a regular basis? We probably ought to get this screening business perfected before then.....



I understand he’s being called “Sky King”, and apparently being reluctantly admired for the way he chose to exit the planet....

OLDCROWE said:

No they appear to only suspect flight and cabin crews of dastardly intent... but the background check she had was quite though, far more than mine was several years ago when I did airport projects. Along that line I have never seen general terminal personnel go through screening, anybody know if they have a separate facility for burger flippers, magazine stand folks and gate attendants at the medium and bigger airports?

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Burger flippers are given access through security, but only in the terminal

SIDA is for those needing to be on the 121 ramp/runway/taxiway

AOA is for those outside SIDA but needing access to GA ramp and taxi way and runway.

Each have different levels of access

kcabpilot said:

…. he tried to do a barrel roll and botched it pretty good as he came out heading the opposite way he went in. ….. He just happened to have enough altitude (barely) to pull it off so in that sense and the fact that it got recorded, it was pretty spectacular...…

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Yup, nose came down and he fell out of the roll, looked like he did a split S or at least dished out of it.
Easy enough for that to happen the first time out, don't ask me how I know.
I wonder how fast that Dash 8 got going downhill, and how many G's he pulled on the recovery.

Eddie Foy said:

One little known fact is that ramp people don't go thru security like everybody else. Took them 10 years after 911 before they stopped making Captains take their shoes off in front of the travelling masses.

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Not true anymore. The gun running operation at ATL closed that hole. In fact, when I leave the airplane because I walk 50 feet outside the sterile area to get to the employee bus, I have to get re screened to have access to the employee bus on the ramp. Equally so, everyone is ran through security screening in the parking lot before they can board the employee bus.

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On a side note. What was that plane worth?? Does insurance cover an employee going off the edge and destroying your plane??


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mike mcs repair said:

On a side note. What was that plane worth?? Does insurance cover an employee going off the edge and destroying your plane??


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Hard to say. Most airlines actually don't own the airplanes. The bank owns them and they are leased. Right now there is an insurance company lawyer pouring through the coverage exemptions to deny the claim.

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Wiki says the unit cost of a Dash-8 Q400 is $32.2M.

Most airlines have war risk coverage which covers adverse acts including theft.