and i m george how will ouel. a turbo prop plane crashed after a mechanic stole it from the sea-tac airport. an unreal story. it could have been so much worse. ment plane did go down on ketron island southwest of the airport killing the pilot. a few people live on that s land. thankfully no one on the ground was hurt. the aircraft took off without authorization and thankfully as well without any passengers on that plane. and here is what we know about the person at the controls. only identified as a 29-year-old horizon air mechanic from pierce county, washington. this according to officials. we also just received some of the radio transitions from the tower. apparently the mechanic on that plane making some really dangerous stunts there, surprising that he could do it.
flying this plane is chilling. and you can certainly understand the measured reaction with the control tower there just trying to encourage him to land this plane. what do you make of it? well, natalie, i certainly agree this controller almost sounds like a hostage negotiator, like an fbi trained hostage negotiator. he is talking to the guy, trying to calm him down, trying to get him to land. at one point he talks about landing at a military base there. he was only like a mile away at that time. and the mechanic said that i guess it would be jail for life. so at different times when you listen to all of the recordings that have been released, it sounds like he goes almost bipolar where he is happy at one time and then he is talking about disappointing people on the ground and jail for life and
you have to separately qualify, be able to run and taxi the aircraft. and sos as i understand in this case, they had taxied it over to a maintenance parking area. and so once at that point, i mean he had the ability to move the plane, he knows how to taxi the plane. to me it sounded like even from the very early clips when we saw the loop and the turn, it looked like he had some experience flying. but here it is almost like he is experimenting, almost like he is doing a science project and talking to the air traffic controller as he experiments with this aircraft. and clearly hadn t thought the ending through because after the barrel roll or after the loop what he said i thought that would be it, i don t know. to me it just sounds like someone that snapped. yeah, and you mention that mechanics do test these airplanes as they are known to taxi at airports.
yeah, that is all i have no idea what all that means. i wouldn t know how to punch it in. i m on autopilot. not taking any jets. i m actually trying to keep you away from any aircraft trying to land at sea-tac. yeah, i don t want to screw with that. i m glad you re not, you know, screwing up everyone else s day. on account of me. i m down to 2100. started like 30 something. 2100 pounds of fuel. you re at 2100 pounds of fuel left? yeah. i don t know what the burn burnout is like on takeoff, but, yeah, it burned quite a bit faster than i expected. so again, we heard from this mechanic on the plane there, you get a sense of how he felt about stealing a plane from sea-tac,
so on. so it is bizarre to say the least. and of course this is one of the best arguments for effective employee assistance programs. as you know, i m a research psychologist, not a therapist, but i just wonder if anybody with horizon even suspected that this guy was going unstable. right, because mechanics don t even get the scrutiny we ve been hearing from aviation officials that passengers get. and certainly you would imagine in the investigation they will be speaking with his colleagues, people that work with him, to get a sense of who he was, trying to get in to his mind. but alan, let s listen to a bit more of that audio. because again, getting a sense of the tone of this he cmechani his feeling about stealing a plane from sea-tac. it is bizarre to i a tsay the l. let s listen.