An airline employee crashes an airliner in Seattle

By M.R.

THE skies above Seattle-Tacoma International Airport were closed on August 10th after an airline employee stole an empty 76-seat plane and performed death-defying aerial acrobatics before crashing the turboprop onto a small island. That no-one but the pilot himself was killed had nothing to do with intervention by the military, the airport, the airline or air-traffic controllers. It had everything to do with the relatively benign intentions of the employee, who appears not to have been a trained pilot and refused to attempt a runway landing for fear he might cause ground casualties.

Recordings of the employee’s conversation with air-traffic controllers shed light on his motives. The 29-year-old, identified only as Rich, describes himself as a “broken guy”. He appears calm and composed, and his speech is peppered with sardonic humour: about his race, his salary and his prospects of now being made a pilot by Alaska Airlines, an affiliate of Horizon. Video footage shows the plane performing a barrel roll that comes within a whisker of catastrophe. When air-traffic controllers try to offer assistance, the pilot declines their help, because “I’ve played some video games before”. Despite his remarkable situation, Rich comes across as a lonely, likeable man: “I don’t want to hurt no-one. I just want you to whisper sweet nothings into my ear.”

Pilots in similar situations have not always acted with the same compassion. The pilots of Germanwings Flight 9525 in 2015, LAM Mozambique Airlines Flight 470 in 2013, and EgyptAir Flight 990 in 1999 all chose to murder their passengers while ending their own lives. Whatever their motives, rogue airline employees present a unique threat to global security. Although commercial aviation is safer than ever—in 2017 there were no fatal passenger-jet crashes—the airline industry knows that the risk of accidents due to suicidal employees has remained high. With his bizarre final act, Rich has sent a clear warning to the world that this threat has not gone away.