Skywest pilot allegedly commits suicide inside airplane

[Check Airman]

Brian Joseph Hedglin Stole SkyWest Airplane in Utah (http://www.nycaviation.com/2012/07/did-someone-try-to-steal-a-skywest-plane-in-utah-last-night/#.UAW0z3CAEY0)

SkyWest Airlines crews at their home base of St. George, Utah, arrived at work this morning to find one of their Delta Connection-liveried Bombardier CRJ-700 CRJ-200 jets nosed into a ditch. The airport’s lone terminal also suffered some damage along with several private cars in the parking lot.



Details remain very sketchy. What we do know is the incident occurred around 3 am local time, according to a KSL report (http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=21291573&title=st-george-airport-closed-following-incident-with-plane&s_cid=featured-2). Initially there were no reports of injuries, but later the possibility of one seriously injured person was raised.



The airport was closed completely until late Tuesday morning as the FBI and local police investigated. Roads surrounding the airport were also closed. Several flights were cancelled, some were being operated out Cedar City Municipal Airport about 70 miles north of St. George, while some were being replaced by bus service (http://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive/2012/07/17/fbi-investigates-incident-at-st-george-airport/).


No one is saying who or what was responsible for the damage, nor the nature of the damage. The plane in the ditch was first revealed through a reader-submitted cellphone photo posted on KSL.com.



More recent pictures showed the plane being lifted by crane from an area that appeared to be a public parking area, and the plane’s left wing had obviously contacted some parked cars. Presumably the damage to the terminal could have also been caused by the plane hitting it.


So what happened? In the photos we’ve seen so far, the plane did not appear to have a tug or a towbar attached to it, which could indicate that the plane’s engines were actually powered up and it was moving on its own.



It is possible that a group of people could have pushed it by hand, but to push a larger CRJ any considerable distance would have required a pretty large group.


The plane was still in one piece, but there was no way of telling how severe the damage without getting a closer view of the fuselage. All of the plane’s Delta branding, including the tail and the fuselage titles, are now covered in white plastic.


Based on the fact that the FBI and TSA were investigating (http://fox13now.com/2012/07/17/ground-incident-closes-st-george-airport/), it seems that this was not an accident caused by a SkyWest employee in the course of his job.


Got any details? Email us at [email protected].

Developing…
UPDATE 1:30 PM ET: ABC 4 KTVX reporter Marcos Ortiz has tweeted an unconfirmed report from the scene that a murder suspect (https://twitter.com/tv_mortiz/status/225277372914606080) or a fugitive (https://twitter.com/tv_mortiz/status/225276331921915904) may have been involved in the incident. He also says that one person may have been killed (https://twitter.com/tv_mortiz/status/225269837172195328), but is awaiting a statement from the St. George assistant city manager.


UPDATE 2:15 PM ET: Brian Joseph Hedglin, a 40-year-old SkyWest (http://www.nycaviation.com/tag/SkyWest/) pilot who was wanted for murdering his girlfriend in Colorado Springs, committed suicide in the plane after attempting to steal it.


ABC 4 reports (http://www.abc4.com/content/news/top_stories/story/UPDATE-Man-tried-to-steal-Sky-West-plane/pVXSNLRCo0i-6lGyj_rEjQ.cspx) that Hedglin rode his motorcycle to the airport and hopped a fence at around 12:30 am.
He then started up the aircraft and began taxiing.


According to one witness account, the plane hit a jetway, sheared its right wing into the terminal, plowed through the perimeter fence and collapsed its nose gear before taking out six cars and coming to rest in a ditch adjacent to a car parking lot.


Hedglin was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound inside the aircraft.

[stepwilk]

the plane hit a jetway, sheared its right wing into the terminal, plowed through the perimeter fence and collapsed its nose gear before taking out six cars and coming to rest in a ditch adjacent to a car parking lot.

He was a Skywest pilot???

[Loose rivets]

Heard on the news he'd lost the privileges of his license some time before.

Pictures seemed to show quite a hunk of wing missing, though very dark.

[aterpster]

stepwick:

He was a Skywest pilot???

Appaently a suspended Skywest pilot.

Sounds like he wanted to go out in horrific style.

I cannot comprehend what is going on with some (a very few) pilots.

[Lyman]

One wonders if his intention wasn't to get airborne, and erm, take out some others. What is the security issue here?

All I can think about is that idiot who walked thru a gate with a weapon onto a PSA Bae and assassinated both pilots after take off. But that was way befor TSA.

[crippen]

Pilot who 'killed his girlfriend' tries to steal a commercial plane, crashes it and then kills himself
By ASSOCIATED PRESS


An airline captain on the run after murdering his girlfriend today stole a passenger jet in an apparent attempt to escape but crashed the aircraft into a terminal building and then shot himself.
Brian Hedglin, 40, went on the rampage in a 50-seat passenger jet at St George airport in Utah days after murdering his girlfriend.
Police say he drove his motorbike to the St George Municipal Airport in Utah and scaled a razor wire fence while the airport was closed, using a rug for protection
He then boarded the 50-passenger SkyWest jet and drove it past a terminal building, clipping the wing, before crashing into cars in a parking lot.
The captain - who worked for Skywest - then shot himself in the cockpit.


http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/07/17/article-2175041-1419D3A0000005DC-813_634x395.jpg

The plane was damaged in the crash and will need to be repaired

Disruption: The Utah airport remained closed to commercial traffic as the FBI and the Transportation Security Administration investigated the incident
A police officer making routine rounds noticed the rug over the fence and moments later heard the sound of a plane's engine firing up.
He found the craft idling, boarded it and discovered Hedglin dead, a gunshot wound to his head.
The plane was not in service at the time and had no passengers on board. All commercial flights were cancelled until further notice.


Hedglin was wanted in connection with the death of Christina Cornejo, 39, in Colorado Springs. Her body was found Friday by police doing a welfare check at the request of her family. Her death has been ruled a homicide.
The Gazette of Colorado Springs, citing court records, reported that Hedglin dated Cornejo, for four years and was arrested in March after claims he had been harassing her.
They were both members of the Colorado National Guard. Hedglin had served part-time since 2008 as a chef. He had never deployed.
Cornejo was full-time, having worked for the Guard since 2006, becoming an officer in 2011.
The newspaper said he was free on $10,000 bond when Cornejo was found dead.


Read more: Brian Hedglin: Pilot who 'killed his girlfriend' tries to steal a commercial plane, crashes it and then kills himself | Mail Online (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2175041/Brian-Hedglin-Pilot-killed-girlfriend-tries-steal-commercial-plane-crashes-kills-himself.html#ixzz20wZB2z3b)

[Road_Hog]

He was a Skywest pilot???

Perhaps he had imbibed some Dutch courage?

[Ollie Onion]

Oh Dear, the way things are going we are all going to be required to undergo yearly physc interviews along with our medicals :(

[phlyer2]

jeez...sounds more like a Bruce Willis film plot.

poor sod must have been in a really dark place.

[charliemouse]

yes - poor murdering sod - lets hope despite all evidence hes in a dark warm place...

Now - sparing us the ubiquitous "RIP" posts... perhaps we could keep it to aircraft and not social studies GCSE/ amateur hour psychology?

[worldpilot]

Well, the airport authority must be lucky that this pilot couldn't get the plane off the ground and commit suicide, endangering perhaps other people.

The question is now, despite all the negative incidents of the last years and tight security, how was it possible for this pilot to commit such security breach??:ugh::ugh:

[BobM2]

The question is now, despite all the negative incidents of the last years and tight security, how was it possible for this pilot to commit such security breach??:ugh::ugh:

The security DID work. With his inside knowledge of the airplane & airport he was able to gain access to the cockpit & start the engines, but he still couldn't get it off the ramp without tearing the wing off.

[chuks]

It is a matter of the level of security, I guess. You, too, could throw a rug over a fence topped with razor wire to get onto the secured area of most any airport. You might even be able to get into an aircraft, but without specialist knowledge that might be as far as you get. That said, there was the 'Barefoot Bandit,' that goofy kid who stole numerous aircraft until he was finally caught.

I don't know about this particular type of aircraft, but I happen to have two keys in my possession that would enable me to unlock two fairly common types of aircraft, one 'large' and one 'small.' All of the aircraft of each type share a common key, and I have the keys because sometimes I flew those types.

Then you have the way that many small airports are secured by a keypad with the combination known to all, if not simply written down next to the keypad. All in all, we still depend on the fact that almost all of us are reasonable people who do not plan to steal an aircraft.

The odd lunatic might be deterred or simply delayed by what we have for security but he would not be stopped. That would mean posting armed guards on each and every parked aircraft, plus finding a way to read the crew's mind before each flight.

[MD80rookie]

He found the craft idling, boarded it and discovered Hedglin dead, a gunshot wound to his head.

He taxied with the door open? Or how else did the police board the aircraft?

[willl05]

... is completely useless if somebody can just jump the fence and get into a plane. He could have hidden - something - and left again, unnoticed.

[aterpster]

BobM2:

The security DID work. With his inside knowledge of the airplane & airport he was able to gain access to the cockpit & start the engines, but he still couldn't get it off the ramp without tearing the wing off.

If the security had worked he wouldn't have been able to get near the airplane. He was a suspended employee. Plus, even an active crew shouldn't be able to gain access to an aircraft that was supposedly secured for the night.

Also, I'm not sure how his tearing the wing off relates to airport security.

I suspect the FAA will be cutting the carrier a new one for the terrible security.

[stepwilk]

He taxied with the door open? Or how else did the police board the aircraft?

There's no problem opening a door like this from the outside, assuming you can get something high enough to stand on and that the airplane isn't pressurized. LEOs aren't dumb, but there are even how-to directions around the exterior handle.

[Lyman]

No, the security did not work, the results speak for themselves....


Razor wire. Impenetrable? Not for a drunken and armed suspected murderer with a throw rug.....

Any aircraft can be a formidable weapon of terror, and or destruction. So, keeping intruders off the field failed. So let's wait for something to happen?

Any unattended aircraft needs a fail safe and secure ignition. Otherwise go cheap, and hire a guard.

[chuks]

What more did you expect to see, in terms of securing a parked aircraft for the night? Once he was over that fence, well.... It reads as if he pulled the chocks, started it up, did his own push-back using reverse thrust, but then had things kind of unravel from that point. Otherwise, who knows? He might have had some notion of heading off into the great unknown in his stolen regional airliner, or perhaps he wanted to go out with a bang, but I don't see how one can say that this was down to 'terrible security.'

A 'fail safe and secure ignition...' brilliant idea, until it locks in flight! I would like to see the certification process for that one!

That cop was after him before the motorcycle he used to get to the airport had gone cold.

I doubt very much that there was any real deficiency in the required level of security. That level is not designed to stop this sort of crime. We have seen a student steal a C-150 he was sent out to pre-flight for a lesson, for Heaven's sake! What should we do, handcuff them first?

Let's see how this one plays out.

[aterpster]

chuks:


I doubt very much that there was any real deficiency in the required level of security. That level is not designed to stop this sort of crime. We have seen a student steal a C-150 he was sent out to pre-flight for a lesson, for Heaven's sake! What should we do, handcuff them first?

Somehow, I fail to relate the theft of a light aircraft trainer with a transport airplane at a Part 139 airport.

[Lyman]

Perhaps a change of perspective. If SW was more careful with a twenty five million dollar investment than what we see, theft of property moots the knee jerk reaction when terrorism is the topic?

The cop was on a beat, I assume, and that leaves holes in this a/c's care... An ignition lock needn't be on the checklist, or on the a/c. It can be an area sensor, CCTVmonitored continuously, etc.

If I left my a/c in the care of an occasional public servant, I would not be protecting my assets, my insurance carrier, or the people who live under any potential flight path the thief/kamikaze may choose.

[Airbubba]

Heard on the news he'd lost the privileges of his license some time before.

A pilot who is suspended or facing termination must unfortunately be viewed as a potential security threat these days. Many U.S. carriers now have a quiet policy of deadheading these crewmembers on another airline to lessen the chance of an inside job of commandeering an aircraft.

Auburn Calloway at FedEx and Gamal El-Batouti at EgyptAir were both facing termination hearings when they attempted to crash their company aircraft (El-Batouti was successful with SU990).

Chris Phatswe took up an Air Botswana ATR-42 and commited suicide with it in 1999:

1999 Air Botswana incident - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Air_Botswana_incident)

If the security had worked he wouldn't have been able to get near the airplane. He was a suspended employee. Plus, even an active crew shouldn't be able to gain access to an aircraft that was supposedly secured for the night.

Some fairly simple but effective measures restrict access to an unattended aircraft where I work. A few years ago TSA 'Tiger Teams' were testing overnight aircraft security, seems like one of them was using a TAT or AOA probe as a step to gain access to an overhead hatch and damaged several RJ aircraft.

I don't know about this particular type of aircraft, but I happen to have two keys in my possession that would enable me to unlock two fairly common types of aircraft, one 'large' and one 'small.' All of the aircraft of each type share a common key, and I have the keys because sometimes I flew those types.

I don't even have access to a Boeing or Airbus ignition key after hours.

The scenario of a pilot murdering a spouse or domestic partner has played out a few times. The most infamous case in my view is the gruesome Woodchipper Murder:

Helle Crafts - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helle_Crafts)

[Lyman]

This kerfuffel is a no brainer. What remains very troubling is the Captain of a JetBlue flight who went bull**** and came very close to annihilating his crew and pax. Include a passive FO in the mix, instead of a savvy second in command, and maybe we see suicide by Airbus instead of some nut who was wired on energy bars...

[PPRuNeUser0171]

Also, I'm not sure how his tearing the wing off relates to airport security.


I'm surprised that none of the security heard the plane start up or the subsequent crash.

also, why did it take so long for someone to notice it? Don't the security guards do patrols?

[Lyman]

Also, I'm not sure how his tearing the wing off relates to airport security.

Erm...how about at the very least it saved SW from the lawsuits on the way if the a/c gets airborne? He may roll the jet into a ball on the runway, but he won't get in to a position to land on citizens, who might start looking for shysters?

[BobM2]

No, the security did not work, the results speak for themselves....
The main object of airport security is to keep passengers & the public safe. Those goals were accomplished in this case as no passengers were present & the aircraft was so positioned at the gate that even a trained pilot could not get it airborne in one piece.

[FullWings]

I don't even have access to a Boeing or Airbus ignition key after hours.
What is a "Boeing or Airbus ignition key"? I ask in a sprit of pure enquiry...

(Or more pressingly, where can I get one as I'm down to fly a 777 to China tomorrow? That is if the mag. drop is OK...)

[STN Ramp Rat]

What is a "Boeing or Airbus ignition key"? I ask in a sprit of pure enquiry...

The Russian aircraft all had locks, when I used to look after TU154’S we had to wait for the engineer to come down and unlock the hold doors so we could offload the baggage. I also remember not being able to load an IL76 until the engineer turned up with the key to unlock the front door. I don’t think they had ignition keys though :O

[stepwilk]

I don't even have access to a Boeing or Airbus ignition key after hours.

I've never flown a turbine aircraft, even a King Air or a straight-wing Citation, that had an "ignition key."

[sevenstrokeroll]

on the MU2 I flew, there was a key that enabled the electrical system...you didn't turn it to 'crank' the engine, or supply spark to the igniters...but it was sort of odd.

[Spooky 2]

This brand new airport has little if any security even though it is headquarters for Skywest Airlines. About three months ago a pilot and two pax took off in a Cessna and must have gone vertical after lift off. This was around 0100 in the mornng. No one new about the wreckage until the next morning when they found the smoldering Cessna and it's dead occupants at the end of the runway. BTW, the pilot was another regional F/O!

This kind of stuff gives the regulators so much fodder for more regulation that it's almost impossible to imagine where it might stop and the feds are already asking questions. Don't really know why this guy did not get airborne as he certainly was qualified. Imagine for one minute that this guy got airborne and flew down to LAS, less than 200 miles away and put the airplane into the side of some hotel. It would take the officials months to figure out who had committed the crime and in the mean time we would have beat the war drums to a new level.

Don't bet on the Air Force jumping to the rescue. No one would have even known that the guy got off the ground at St Georege until it was to late to have done anything to have prevented the outcome.

BTW again. As i write this the spector or some terrorist learning to fly is once again the lead story on what passes for national news here in the US. Truely pathetic but the look at our excuse for a govermemt.

[Ditchdigger]

It reads as if he pulled the chocks, started it up, did his own push-back
using reverse thrust, but then had things kind of unravel from that point.




Don't really know why this guy did not get airborne as he certainly was
qualified.


If you study the photographs accompanying this news story--The Associated Press: Official: Colo murder suspect tries to steal plane (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i5HnnfkLUeh6R0ZQ6xbaRewnPnNA?docId=8427afe0d87b42bab35 acad88ce384bb) , it appears that he didn't actually "push back" at all. From the end of the jetway, it seems as if he only went forward, passing alongside the terminal building on his way into the parking lot in front of the terminal.

One might speculate that he damaged the wing almost immediatly, in contacting the jetway, and realized that he wasn't going to get off the ground, so he just proceeded forward to his ultimate demise, but far be it from me to speculate...

[radiosutch]

Quote:

Somehow, I fail to relate the theft of a light aircraft trainer with a transport airplane at a Part 139 airport.

There is previous evidence of this type of thing.
In the 70's a US sergeant stole a C-130 from Mildenhall?, single handedly took off and crashed it in the Western Channel. Or so it was believed as no wreckage was found.

[chuks]

Was what we used to see as graffiti in the Washington, D.C. area in the early '70's. He was some jerk Specialist who stole a US Army Huey and landed on the grounds of the White House to prove that he could, too, fly a helicopter after the Army had told him he was not even helicopter pilot material! After that the Army fitted, yes, ignition keys!

Ignition keys for airliners, Bubba? Whatever next?

There's no ultimate protection against this sort of thing. I just did a TSA on-line security course while renewing my FAA CFI. There were some pretty obvious holes in the cheese slices there to be seen, I have to say, but then there would be! At some point you are still going to see someone in sole charge of an aircraft, when there must be an obvious risk involved. Well, every day we share the road with numerous vehicles that go speeding past just inches away, not seeming to worry about the odd homicidal lunatic bent on causing a head-on crash. What about that, then?

At some point one simply has to trust people to behave properly. We have seen thefts of cars, of course, but also aircraft, buses, boats, the odd train or two, an M-60 tank, diggers, bulldozers... pretty much anything you can think of can be misused to commit mayhem.

Somehow you figure out a way to put a 'foolproof' ignition switch into the cockpit, ignoring the obvious risks that must bring of somehow shutting down vital systems in flight... so your maniac simply breaks into the key cabinet, say. What then?

[Nemrytter]

Somehow you figure out a way to put a 'foolproof' ignition switch into the cockpit, ignoring the obvious risks that must bring of somehow shutting down vital systems in flight... so your maniac simply breaks into the key cabinet, say. What then?
Installing a foolproof system will simply result in a better fool.

[zondaracer]

You could design a start system that requires two people to turn a switch at the same time, but the switches would have to be far apart that one person couldn't reach both at the same time, much like the launchers for a nuclear weapon. In this case, you would need two fools.

[TWT]

The airplane thief would just bring an accomplice in that case.

[chuks]

There you are at 30 thousand feet with nothing on the clock but the maker's name and your fellow crewmember out cold, when you very badly want to operate a pair of switches placed six feet apart in a four-foot wide cockpit... so, 'What now, Genius?'

I am sure we shall see some of our elected representatives all over this one, telling their voters that they shall be demanding action from the TSA to prevent such a thing ever happening again. 'How to do that?' well, never mind, it's just something that needs to be done.

Just remember that a fool can ask a question that a thousand wisemen couldn't answer. 'How can you absolutely protect me from myself?' for instance. Heck, we even had an Air Force pilot go off on his own with an A-10 Warthog with bombs hanging off its wings, although perhaps they were not fuzed. Think about that one if you want to worry about a regional airliner in the hands of a criminal.

I think the TSA will just have to tell everyone that, hey, 'The system worked as designed,' followed by 'Next question, please?' There's no way we are going to see keyed switches in airliner cockpits; the complications and risks, not to mention the expense, are too high. You simply end up at some point with someone alone in a cockpit, when you can only hope that he or she is thinking straight; that is a given in aviation. That last incident, when the Captain lost it... it was only luck that saw the FO locked in and the Captain locked out. It could very easily have gone the other way.

[The Ancient Geek]

This thread is getting a tad silly.

The "lock" is the knowledge required to operate a complex aircraft.
This security is more than adequate to deter an outsider.

As many banks have discovered, no amount of external security can prevent insider crime. Any intelligent insider can find a way of bypassing any security measure which can be sensibly enforced.

[SeenItAll]

I don't think security was that bad. Read the Daily Mail article that states:

A police officer making routine rounds noticed the rug over the fence and moments later heard the sound of a plane's engine firing up.

He found the craft idling, boarded it and discovered Hedglin dead, a gunshot wound to his head
Brian Hedglin: Pilot who 'killed his girlfriend' tries to steal a commercial plane, crashes it and then kills himself | Mail Online (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2175041/Brian-Hedglin-Pilot-killed-girlfriend-tries-steal-commercial-plane-crashes-kills-himself.html#ixzz214aYhUiL)

The perimeter fence around an airport is several miles in length. Every inch cannot be patrolled every second. St. Georges, Utah is not a highly populated location. It seems to me that security discovered what was happening quite quickly -- faster even than what might be expected at a more major airport at 3 am.

[Spooky 2]

ea...security is great.:} That's why they failed to notice the Cessna taking off around 0100 hours and then crash inside the arport perimeter killing all the pax just a few months earlier. If that didn't get your attention, why would some RJ starting be so unusual?

Have you ever been to this airport?

[Lyman]

Seen it....The perimeter int the problem. As we see, some fool entered, started and rolled with a jet airliner. Parse it how you will, security has different levels, and different radii, 'proximity' of course chuks is right, no program is perfect, so let's work on what can be done: this should have been easy to prevent, it wasn't.

[ap08]

The "lock" is the knowledge required to operate a complex aircraft.
This security is more than adequate to deter an outsider.It was probably true before MS flight simulator. But not anymore. Quite a lot of outsiders seem to have enough knowledge to start a complex aircraft and perhaps even take off in it.

[Piper_Driver]

Won't the CVR have a record of anything that the perp might have muttered during his ill-fated joy ride? Perhaps there may be some clue to his thoughts located there.

[Airbubba]

You could design a start system that requires two people to turn a switch at the same time, but the switches would have to be far apart that one person couldn't reach both at the same time, much like the launchers for a nuclear weapon. In this case, you would need two fools.

In the 1960's the U.S. civilian chain of command became concerned about the possibility of a renegade Strategic Air Command general comandeering nuclear weapons à la the movies Dr. Strangelove or Fail-Safe. PAL's, Permissive Action Links, were put on all the nukes including the Minuteman missles with the famous two key launch system. The PAL's required an eight digit unlock code that would only be provided in event of an authorized use of the nukes. SAC was afraid the unlock codes might not be available in some attack scenarios and quietly set all the codes to '00000000' for many years. (see: Defusing the Nuclear Threat (http://nuclearrisk.org/3likely.php))

You can come up with complex protocols to prevent unauthorized aircraft operations but there is always the tradeoff between security and the need for easy authorized access for routine operations including maintenance.

As someone noted on another forum, in an incident with similarities to the recent one, a mechanic stole a Lear years ago, clipped a vehicle but was able to get airborne. He also took his own life as authorities approached the plane after landing. I'm surprised someone without a pilot's license could take off and land a Lear, it's no beginner's airplane in my opinion.

Death Ends 1,600-Mile Flight Of Learjet Stolen by Mechanic - NYTimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/26/us/death-ends-1600-mile-flight-of-learjet-stolen-by-mechanic.html)

As many banks have discovered, no amount of external security can prevent insider crime. Any intelligent insider can find a way of bypassing any security measure which can be sensibly enforced.

Ignition keys for airliners, Bubba? Whatever next?

I was being a little whimsical in reply to the guy who said he had keys for large and small aircraft but some operators, both military and civilian do use aftermarket physical locks on throttles and fuel control switches, kinda like putting 'The Club' on your steering wheel when your car is parked on the street in Queens. If you've ever worked for a bankrupt carrier you know how effective the simple protocol of parking a locked vehicle in front of the aircraft until the fuel bill is paid can be.

[BobM2]

If you've ever worked for a bankrupt carrier you know how effective the simple protocol of parking a locked vehicle in front of the aircraft until the fuel bill is paid can be.

In this case the jetway worked just as well & I believe those do require a key.

[deSitter]

I thought it was "interesting" that Delta stripped their logo from the VS while the poor smashed and likely bloody RJ was still in the parking lot.

[chuks]

I have keys for two different aircraft types, but the keys fit the doors, not the (non-existent) ignition switches.

Anyone who watches those tacky TV mockumentaries probably knows how to use a 'slapper' to defeat a lock anyway, so that having or not having a key to any particular aircraft is a non-issue, same as the way pretty much anyone now knows how to get over a razor-wire fence using a rug.

We had a crew chief in Viet Nam take an Army RU-8D for a joyride, just once around the pattern in the middle of the night. He had a PPL single-engine, and he was seriously bored, and he wanted to show his buddies that anyone could fly one of those things, so.... He got away with that, too! The word got out that he had done it, but to track him down and give him a court-martial must have been just too much trouble.

One flight school I worked for saw a 'line boy,' all likkered up, come out in the wee hours to steal a Cessna for a joy ride. He went wazzing around for a while but then stacked it up landing on the taxiway, fortunately without seriously hurting himself or his passenger. I showed up early for work to see this pile of junk out there, when I asked the usual 'What the hell happened?' to get a lot of embarrassed mumbling as an answer, since the foolish young man was the son of one of our senior pilots.

In both cases, above, you had people with inside knowledge who failed to act responsibly, people inside a system designed to protect against outsiders. I don't think you can really say that the victims of the thefts were amiss in applying the level of security they had used; we all prefer to trust our fellow professionals. Not least, screw around with an airplane and you normally can forget having any sort of career in aviation from that point! That's a pretty powerful deterrent to anyone of sound mind, I hope.

I remember back when we did Drivers' Ed in High School; the teacher ('Those who can, do. Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach, teach Drivers' Ed.') told us to assume that every other driver on the road wanted to kill us. He meant well, the poor thing, but if we really made that assumption then we would never take to the road! In the same way, should we re-calibrate our expectations of how our fellows in aviation shall act, given any chance to commit mayhem? No more trips to the toilet, I guess?

By the way: A big bucket of white paint and a brush were kept in the line shack ready for use if one of our aircraft had an accident. The idea was to white out the company logos before the news cameramen got there.

[Carbon Bootprint]

I thought it was "interesting" that Delta stripped their logo from the VS while the poor smashed and likely bloody RJ was still in the parking lot.
Yeah, they whited out the fuselage logo as well, but that's pretty much generic airline SOP in the case of any prang that may attract the paparazzi.

[con-pilot]

The FAA crashed a Sabre 80 in Liberal, Kansas back in the 1980s, ended up on a golf course off the end of the runway, first thing that was done was to paint over the FAA signs on the aircraft.

So hardly anything new or unique.




Oh, no one was hurt, except for egos.

[HS125]

The plane was damaged in the crash and will need to be repaired

Something tells me from the picture they won't be bothering in this case!

[PukinDog]

Won't the CVR have a record of anything that the perp might have muttered during his ill-fated joy ride? Perhaps there may be some clue to his thoughts located there.

His murdering, suicidal, stupid, insane thoughts?

[Ditchdigger]

Local TV obtained the security video of this incident, and carried the story on last evening's newscast: Security video shows SkyWest jet hitting St. George airport | FOX13Now.com (http://fox13now.com/2012/11/07/security-video-shows-skywest-jet-hitting-st-george-airport/)

[Road_Hog]

The video in the above post is worth a watch. Absolutely no attempt to taxi the plane and attempt a take off.

Hits a skywalk almost instantly, then clips the terminal building and then ploughs straight into a load of cars in the car park.

Alcohol has got to be involved.

[JW411]

Sex, more likely.

[Airbubba]

Alcohol has got to be involved.

The fact that Hedglin was suspected of murdering his girlfriend would also seem to be a factor.

A DC-8 cargo pilot commited suicide by jumping in front of a truck after his pregnant girfriend's body surfaced in the river back in 1989:

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Google News Archive Search (http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=4LFRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=W24DAAAAIBAJ&pg=6850,6698731&hl=en)

[Ditchdigger]

Not to imply any connection whatsoever, and not germaine to this discussion at all, but, because it's something that I suspect is universally familiar to the professional aviation community, I will mention it here--5 years later, USAir 427 crashed, literally only a couple of miles down the highway from the above incident.

[Christodoulidesd]

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e2d_1352357755

[A and C]

The only ting that I am sure of is that the airport security industry will use this incident to find ways of increasing security to guard against this sort of thing.....and charge te industry a sky high fee for doing so.

Expect all sorts of money making antics from the security parasites in the wake of this.

[DownIn3Green]

And hire the ilk of the same ones who work the security checkpoints...Let's face it, and this incident proves it, any number of us have the knowledge to breach security...