Inside the 'Complex' Story Of #SKYKING—A Ground Crew Worker Who Stole And Flew $33M Commercial Plane
April 14, 2026
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13:07Now PlayingInside the 'Complex' Story Of #SKYKING—A Ground Crew Worker Who Stole And Flew $33M Commercial Plane
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as posted by the channelAugust 10th, 2018, started out like any normal day at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, until air traffic control noticed a plane rolling down the runway that shouldn’t have been. 28-year-old Richard “Beebo” Russell, a ground service agent with Horizon Air who never flew a plane before, showed up to work and did what he described as a bad thing – stole an empty commercial passenger plane to take a fatal joyride throughout the Pacific Northwest. The audio of Russell’s last conversation with air traffic control didn’t reveal a criminal mastermind, but a self-described broken man who was seemingly in the midst of a mental health crisis. After flying for over an hour around the Puget Sound, Russell completed a successful barrel roll before crashing the plane into Ketron Island. No one else was injured, and the FBI’s investigation found no information that “would suggest the theft of the aircraft was related to wider criminal activity or terrorist ideology.” Patricia E. Gillespie, the director of “#SKYKING: Panic in the Sky,” joined Forbes True Crime to discuss the story of Richard Russell.
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