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?

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.

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.

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.

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)

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

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.

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

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.

Yes, well...
 

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.

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.

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.

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

His murdering, suicidal, stupid, insane thoughts?

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

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.

Sex, more likely.

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

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.

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

More money for security
 

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.

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...