Suicidal ground worker crashes Alaska Air plane

Bloomberg

Step inside the cockpit of an empty commercial aircraft and the pilot controls are yours. You don’t need a key or any special passcode to power up the plane and fly it away, whether it’s a small regional jet or a giant twin-deck Airbus A380.
The suicide-by-plane at Seattle’s Sea-Tac International Airport, which ended when a rogue airline employee crashed a stolen 76-seat turboprop into an island, has raised fresh questions about aviation security.
To abscond with a parked plane, there are basically just two security barriers in the way: obtaining access to a non-public area, and possessing enough knowledge to operate the aircraft.
The first hurdle was easily jumped by the Horizon Air employee who stole and then crashed a Bombardier Q400. As a ground services agent, he was authorised to be in the maintenance area where the plane was parked, said Brad Tilden, chief executive officer of Alaska Air Group, which owns Horizon Air.
“This is aviation in America: The doors to the airplanes are not keyed like a car, there’s not an ignition,” Tilden said.
“We secure the airfield and then we have employees that are credentialed and authorised to be there.”
It’s too early to say what changes might be needed to current procedures, the CEO said. The employee, reported to be 29 years old by the local sheriff, was killed and no one else
was injured.
Among the questions being asked by both experts and observers: How did the employee — who wasn’t a pilot — know how to start, taxi and launch a complex, modern aircraft? What if his intention had been to harm others besides himself? And despite the immense increase in airline passenger and employee security screening since 2001, how secure are the planes themselves, given all the people authorised to service them every day?
“As an airline employee, this guy has been vetted, background-checked, all of those things before he gets any of the credentials,” said John Cox, a former US Airways pilot who is now president of consulting company Safety Operating Systems.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is leading the investigation into the plane theft, supported by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), said Debra Eckrote, the NTSB’s regional chief in Seattle.
The aircraft is “pretty fragmented” and the NTSB will send the flight data and cockpit voice recorders to Washington for analysis, she said.
Stealing a commercial plane isn’t without precedent. In May 2003, a Boeing 727 was stolen by an aircraft mechanic and his assistant from an airport in
Angola. The pair flew the aircraft, formerly operated by American Airlines, out over the Atlantic and vanished without communicating with air traffic controllers. The aircraft was never found.
Much of the security imposed after the 2001 terrorist hijackings involves more rigorous screening for passengers and airline employees, along with new rules around access to cockpits in flight and federal procedures for pilots and flight attendants to report colleagues who they feel may not be fit for duty.
But those measures don’t apply when a plane is parked and empty.
And the US hasn’t imposed similar fitness reporting requirements for other airline employees, such as ramp workers or mechanics, said John Nance, a former airline and Air Force pilot who now works as an aviation consultant.

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