Stolen DHC8-400 Crashes in Seattle

I haven’t read anything about flight sims. But rampers and tug crews can get very familiar with the flight deck–even those who are not mechanics. Often they are trained to at least get the battery on so that the plane is protected when air and ground power is connected. Some are further trained to do a fire test and crank the APU. Once he understands the principal of battery, fuel, air, start–an intelligent individual can, with sufficient time, can get just about any airliner to move under its own power.

I think the reaction among informed decision makers will be to do nothing. Which is as it should be. There is a huge amount of trust in Aviation and cumbersome layers of procedures will never end that dependence on trust. If the freakout intensifies (which I don’t believe it will) some self-promoting politician will get precious camera time because of some silly proposal and the system will squash his idea and the people will forget. Which again is as it should be. Our hobby’s reputation as a useless and harmless waste of time is safe :slight_smile:

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According to USA Today, perhaps as reliable as the next news source, he was a baggage handler whom was trained and cleared to move aircraft with a tug. He stated to ATC that he knew “a little” because he had flown “video games”. The article also says that the aircraft was in a flyable state because it was scheduled to fly that night, and that the ramp service worker had to turn it around with a tug in order to depart.

I’m pretty sure that many non crew Mudspikers could start, taxi, and takeoff in a number of aircraft, including an F/A-18 or a B-767 given enough time in the cockpit. Some of us could without a checklist and do it quickly for that matter. Repositioning the aircraft with a tug would be the most challenging personally.

The fact that he was communicating with ATC points to familiarity with cockpit systems and that he planned the event, IMO.

A tragedy indeed. Hopefully we will not see a backlash against flightsims…I dn’t think so since MSFS was specifically mentioned in the 911 report as one of the training aids those terrorists used and there was no backlash.

This is not the first time something like this has happened. In 1999, a disgruntle pilot for Air Botswana stole a ATR-42, flew around for a while (the report I saw also mentioned he’d did some aerobatics) before crashing it into other Air Botswana ATR-42s.

Then there is the 727 stolen from Angola in 2003 that has never been found. This was of some concern to me personally since I was the N2 for Carrier Strike Group 7 at the time–we had some Nobel Eagle responsibilities and while San Diego is far from Angola…you never know. I followed the issue for a lot longer than the press maintained an interest. But there was nothing. We doubt these guys were suicidal–more likely repossessing the aircraft (it hadn’t paid its airport fees) or saw a way to make a quick buck by steeling it and selling it to??? Again the terrorist possibility.