Now that it has sunk below the fold—or will have by the time you read this—the most surprising thing about Friday’s bizarre stolen Q400 incident is that it wasn’t streamed live on Facebook. Now that I’ve typed that, I realize someone will send a link saying, oh, but it was.
I’ve been scanning the domestic press for the inevitable overreaction, but thus far, it has not materialized. I haven’t seen the shrill call for tighter security or more Rorschach and lie detector tests for ramp workers. Give it time, I guess. One reason might be that the entire thing was so utterly stupefying, it’s difficult to think it through a full circle. Perhaps even the usual suspects who call for more rules, procedures and restrictions actually realize that this time.
Anyone in aviation won’t be perplexed about how the worker—now named as 29-year-old Richard Russell—got across the ramp and into the airplane. Ramp workers are security cleared, dressed for success and have largely unfettered access to aircraft owned by the companies they work for. A challenge from a co-worker would be unlikely. The ramp is not necessarily a see something, say something kind of place.
Lighting up the airplane and actually taxiing it for takeoff struck me as, well, impressive. I remarked to a skydiver friend of mine that I have thousands of hours, an ATP and a little turboprop time and I doubt if I could even start the engines. Then, just for the hell of it, I unearthed the Q400 checklist on the web and … yes, there are six items on the pre-start. All labeled. Probably anyone with flying experience could do it. We don’t know if Russell had any.
I saw a forum comment from a Q400 pilot who was likewise impressed with Russell’s aerobatics in a 60,000-pound airplane. The loop, caught on the cellphones that make it impossible to do anything in modern life without digital immortality, finished breathtakingly close to the surface of Puget Sound. I’m certain I couldn’t do that because I’d be too scared to try.
There will be an investigation, of course, which will describe the how and attempt to explain the why. But I can’t imagine there will be a satisfactory explanation, just as there was no explanation for Andreas Lubitz crashing an Airbus with 150 people aboard into the French Alps in 2015. By explanation, I don’t mean how Lubitz’s known medical issues slipped through the screening gaps, but why one human’s response to the demons of depression and mental illness is to take his own life along with 150 others.
In contrast, if you listen to the tape of Russell describing his torments, he seems … quite normal. Not agitated; just resigned. Tell me if you learned anything from listening, because I did not. It didn’t take the online world long to manufacture the usual memes, which are meant to be funny but are really just mean. Personally, I couldn’t summon so much as a smile. As a society, we’re not always good at seizing the broken, the fallen and the weakened among us by the elbows and lifting them out of the dark before they do something to themselves or others that defies explanation. Often, we don’t even know their names.
There are 7.4 billion people on the planet, any number of whom suffer from mental illnesses serious enough to contemplate suicide. In this case, one of them happened to intersect with the aviation world. And that’s likely all the explanation there will ever be.–Paul Bertorelli
Because the nearest airport to me is largely a regional facility, feeding nearby hubs in Calgary, Vancouver and Seattle, I spend a lot of time on Q400s, including those owned by Horizon Airlines. Lacking anything else to do while the plane is prepared for taxi, I have, over the years, developed a mental checklist on the start procedure. It’s not that I think I’ll ever fly anything much bigger than the Cessna 140 that occasionally separates me from terra firma. But if the procedure is interrupted, I can usually predict whether we’re waiting for a slot or headed back to the gate.
So, with the incident in Seattle and all the hand wringing that has gone with it concerning security and safety, it got me thinking that it couldn’t be that hard to start up a Q400 and get it into the air.
I like to think I would have a leg up in that regard over Richard Russell, the ramp worker who stole an Horizon Q400 and tragically crashed it intentionally on an isolated island on Friday. After all, I sort of know how to fly an airplane.
But after a 30-minute cruise on YouTube, I’m not so sure being a pilot would give me much advantage over someone like Russell. He saw and participated in the turnarounds of hundreds of Q400 flights in his three years working the ramp at SeaTac and probably had a pretty good understanding of what all that switch flicking in the cockpit did in practical terms.
One of the things Russell said in his chillingly calm conversations with ATC while he tooled around Puget Sound in the 76-seat aircraft for 90 minutes on Friday is that he had played video games and basically understood what he was doing.So, I typed “Q400 Startup Procedure” into Google and the fourth item was a remarkably
detailed video by the same name from a U.K. gamer who calls himself Durka. Using FSX, Durka, who’s a big fan of the virtual Q400, goes through every step of the start up in detail. Every switch is clearly located and its position described, every procedure is described in elegantly simple language. It’s more complicated than “flicking a single switch” as some media are portraying it but anyone with an interest in it should be able to do it. The guy should get out of his basement. He has a future in real-world sim training.
I don’t know if this was the video game Russell referred to in his chat with the calm and professional Seattle controller but Russell seemed like a smart guy and I’m sure it, or one like it, in addition to his own experience, would have been plenty for him to get the engines started.But starting it is one thing. Could he actually get it off the ground by watching a how-to flight simulator video? I think that could very well be what happened.
A lot of the comments about this story have mentioned Russell’s smooth flying through some pretty aggressive and complex maneuvers. A few weeks ago, at Farnborough Air Show, a highly experienced Lockheed Martin pilot stunned spectators by looping a civilian model Hercules transport. Russell made it look easy to do the same in a Q400. His loop and recovery in the airliner were smooth and stable, his near-knife-edge turns looked crisp and professional. It’s been confirmed he had no formal fight training. Landing it would have been a different story but Russell told the controllers that he wasn’t planning to land, anyway.
When something like this happens, the natural reaction is to “do something” to prevent it. Maybe the cockpits of empty airliners could be a little more secure but as far as locking them up or adding security devices goes, it strains credibility as to whether that’s worthwhile. Although I guess a copycat repeat of this bizarre incident is possible, it just doesn’t seem likely. There are certainly easier ways to end it all.
And that brings to mind something that might actually help prevent this and other media spectacle suicides.
Rather than concentrate solely on the ramp and aircraft security, the video games and the flicking of switches, I hope the investigations dwell somewhat on what was going on with Russell and what might have prompted him to choose this type of exit.
As a species, we are remarkably adaptable and inventive and it’s usually what gives our lives structure and purpose. Russell had plenty to live for. He had a loving family, lots of interests and pastimes and a long and productive life ahead of him.But the long list of celebrity suicides in recent years suggest that “having it all” is not enough for some people to keep going. I would suggest that no regulatory or enforcement action will prevent another occurrence of this spectacular nature but some work on the mental health issues that are manifesting in this way might actually do some good.–Russ Niles
