aircraft. to our knowledge, he didn t have a pilots license. so to be honest with you, i mean, commercial aircraft are complex machines. they re not as easy to fly as, say, a cessna 150. so i don t know how he achieved the experience that he did. reporter: alaska air group, the parent company of horizon, says this plane theft will push the airline to re-evaluate their post 9/11 security. but a former horizon airline worker says even a minimally trained ground service worker could do this with online flight simulators. part of his job description on tow team was to operate some of the systems that were he was trained to do by horizon air, which is part of the tow team and so essentially he just took that knowledge and then built off of it. reporter: now, in talking to air traffic control, russell did