Richard Russell named as Seattle airport worker who stole plane before crashing into island

Richard Russell has been named as the 29-year-old airport worker who stole and crashed the plane near Seattle
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Ella Wills11 August 2018

The airline employee who hijacked an empty passenger plane from Seattle airport and crashed on a nearby island has been named as Richard Russell.

Two fighters jets pursued the plane, but he crashed in Puget Sound after "performing stunts in the air or due to a lack of flying skills", police said.

Authorities have yet to confirm the hijacker's identity, who was believed to have been killed.

The plane took flight before crashing in a ball flames
Reuters/AP

Mr Russell, who authorities called "suicidal", hijacked the 76-seater turboprop Bombardier Q400, belonging to Alaska Airlines' sister carrier Horizon Air at around 8pm local time on Friday.

Video showed the plane doing large loops and other dangerous manoeuvres as the sun set on Puget Sound. There were no passengers aboard.

Authorities initially said the man was a mechanic, but officials said on Saturday that he was a Horizon employee and had clearance to be among aircraft.

To their knowledge, he was not a licensed pilot. Employees with such clearance direct aircraft for takeoff and gate approach and de-ice planes.

The man used a machine called a pushback tractor to first manoeuvre the aircraft so he could board and then take off, authorities added.

A Horizon Air Bombardier Q400 takes off from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in SeaTac, Washington
EPA

It is unclear how he attained the skills to do loops in the aircraft before crashing about an hour after taking off, they said.

Southers, the aviation security expert, said the man could have caused mass destruction.

The plane was pursued by military aircraft before it crashed on tiny Ketron Island, southwest of Tacoma, Washington.

The empty passenger airplane making an unlikely upside-down aerial loop
AFP/Getty Images

Video showed fiery flames amid trees on the island, which is sparsely populated and only accessible by ferry.

Troyer said F-15 aircraft took off out of Portland, Oregon, were in the air "within a few minutes", and the pilots kept "people on the ground safe".

Sheriff's department officials said they were working to conduct a background investigation on the man.

The man could be heard on audio recordings telling air traffic controllers that he is "just a broken guy".

An air traffic controller called him Rich, and tried to convince him to land the plane.

"There is a runway just off to your right side in about a mile," the controller says.

"Oh man. Those guys will rough me up if I try and land there," the man responded, later adding: "This is probably jail time for life, huh?"

Later the man said: "I've got a lot of people that care about me. It's going to disappoint them to hear that I did this. Just a broken guy, got a few screws loose, I guess."

Flights out of Sea-Tac, the largest commercial airport in the Pacific Northwest, were temporarily grounded during the drama.

Investigators expect they will be able to recover both the cockpit voice recorder and the event data recorder from the plane.

Royal King told The Seattle Times he was photographing a wedding when he saw the low-flying turboprop being chased by two F-15s. He said he did not see the crash but saw smoke.

"It was unfathomable, it was something out of a movie," he told the newspaper.

The Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1800 273 8255. Other international suicide helplines can be found at befrienders.org.

Additional reporting by Associated Press.

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