be to the right of the smoke plume. so, not many people on that island. just a few like resort cabins and whatnot out there. i have never ben on there. but just from what i have been told folks that have been. yeah. and the good news is, we are told by the, pierce county sheriff, that there was nobody killed in the crash on the ground. so nobody killed in the plane. other than the mechanic, of course, who was flying the plane. and nobody killed on the ground. so only one person died of this. this is this mechanic. again, a 29-year-old. pierce county share riff telling us they re working background on him now. this was a suicidal mission. john, without your video, we would not have nearly the understanding of the story that we do now. this is just amazing stuff. and and did you did you speak to the people around you? did they, did anybody else have an inkling of what was going on? you know, there were people were kind of winding down, getting ready to leave. because they close
factor in these accidents, and this one didn t have deaths but apart from the mechanic, but if you think back to the germanwings flight three years ago where the pilot had mental health issues and slammed the plane into a mountain, killing 1 50e people with him, of course we haven t elucidated that yet, the different possibilities on why that happens. there are big question marks. but there are parts to suggest that the pilot may have gone rogue. there have been a number of instances in the last few years where we have seen people just going rogue and finding loopholes in the security system. that s right. because so much of the system is based on your initial qualification. once you get that initial medical license, that s where so much emphasis is placed. you have to renew your medical every year.
from the seattle international airport. and essentially joy rided it, or joy rode it and crashed the plane into ketron island. there was crucially, to understand the story, there was nobody on the plane. and we are also told from, from the pierce county share riff department, that, that, nobody was harmed on impact other than the person who was flying the plane. in other word the mechanic. this was not a terror attempt. it was not a terror incident. not a terrorist story. this was apparently a suicide flight. a former accident investigator. for the federal aviation administration. he joins us on the phone from albuquerque, new mexico. have you ever seen anything like this? no, cyril. thank you for having me. this is this is obviously very unusual. and and i would, caution as to whether or not this was a a legitimate suicide.
know know, what leaps out at you first? there was one thing i am watching the footage of this mechanic flying. and when you first start, when you first start student out flying one of the hardest things to try to do is, to do coordinated turns. and when you turn the plane. it s not like turning a vehicle. y [ indiscernible ] the rudder, the rotors, the turn, a graceful turn. he did a coordinated turn. you know, could he have done it by accident? sure. but i dent thon t think so. i m convinced this person has some flying training, some flying ability. and knows a plane extremely well as a mechanic. you know, the flap lefrlvers.
we don t know. we don t have the identification of the mechanic but we know he was 29 years old. they re checking into his background. the sheriff department tells us this was a suicide flight. we heard that conversation between the control tower and the flight. you also saw the video. you re learning a lot from that. it seems to me the biggest take away at this stage was we were extremely, extremely lucky. well, that s right. extremely lucky and i say, i mean, fortunate that this person well, he said himself, he thought that was going to be it after he did the loop. but very fortunate that there was no one on the ground apparently where the plane eventually crashed. i mean, it s very fortunate in a lot of ways. in some ways, this is the way the system works. we have been open to this vulnerability for so long. there was a lot of discussion about this after september 11, 2001. granted, that s a long time ago.