San Francisco
\nA \u201csuicidal\u201d mechanic stole an empty passenger plane from the Seattle-Tacoma airport, took it for a brief flight that included an aerial loop, and then crashed it. Officials said the incident was not related to terrorism.<\/p>\n
He died when the plane crashed after a 90-minute “joy ride”. Two military F-15s were scrambled to chase the stolen plane, but \u201cwere not involved in the crash\u201d, local officials said.<\/p>\n
Video recorded by a bystander late on Friday showed the passenger airplane making an unlikely upside-down loop, then flying low over Puget Sound before crashing into the sparsely populated Ketron Island in Washington.<\/p>\n
The crash sparked a fire in the dense forest. Flames lit up the night as they spread from the burning wreckage to nearby trees. Officials said there were no victims on the ground. The stolen plane was a twin engine turboprop Q400 airplane belonging to its sister carrier Horizon Air, Alaska Airlines said on Twitter. It normally carries 76 passengers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not a terrorist incident,\u201d Ed Troyer with the Pierce County Sheriff\u2019s office wrote on Twitter.<\/p>\n
The plane thief \u201cis confirmed a suicidal male,\u201d Troyer wrote. \u201cWe know who he is.\u201d The suspect was identified as a 29-year-old airline mechanic and local resident who \u201cacted alone,\u201d Troyer added, confirming that there were \u201cno passengers on the plane\u201d when it crashed.<\/p>\n
The sheriff\u2019s office also said that the F-15s arrived minutes after the plane was stolen and kept the aircraft \u201cout of harms way and people on ground safe.\u201d Horizon Air chief operating officer Constance von Muehlen issued a video statement describing the incident.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe it (the plane) was taken by a single Horizon Air employee and no other passengers or crew were on board,\u201d she said. \u201cOur hearts are with the family of the individual aboard as well as all of our Alaska Air and Horizon Air employees.\u201d The plane was stolen around 8 pm (0300 GMT Saturday) and crashed 90 minutes later, officials said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
San Francisco A \u201csuicidal\u201d mechanic stole an empty passenger plane from the Seattle-Tacoma airport, took it for a brief flight that included an aerial loop, and then crashed it. Officials said the incident was not related to terrorism. He died when the plane crashed after a 90-minute “joy ride”. Two military F-15s were scrambled to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38946,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38945"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38947,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38945\/revisions\/38947"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}