I'm waiting for the Port to admit that the TSA rules and their hoops travelers are forced to jump through are pointless, meaningless and frivolous.

He did not "crash-landed." He crashed.

I gotta believe he had flight lessons somewhere at some time or another. I'm skeptical that playing video games would prepare one to fire up a complex 76-seat twin-engine turboprop, taxi, takeoff, and control it in the air for over an hour.

2, believe it.

The hardest thing by far about flying is the landing. I'm a former aircraft mechanic. I do not have a pilots license, nor have I ever taken flight lessons. But I've gone up on maintenance flights, and I've taken over the controls of a 4 engine aircraft. Once airborne, they aren't that hard to keep airborne if you know even the rudiments of flight dynamics (which you could learn with a decent flight simulator game). Taking off isn't all that hard either. Push the throttles forward, then pull up once you've reached flight speed. It's a bit tricky, but again, doable if you understand the basics.

Landing, on the other hand, takes real practice under the supervision of another pilot that knows what they're doing. A flight simulator game isn't going to be able to do the job. Even a little error in judgement can be disastrous. Too slow, and you stall and crash. Too fast, and you slam into the ground and snap off the landing gear. Distances are hard to judge from the air. The depth perception we are used to on the ground is less helpful in the air. You have to rely more on instruments.

So I'm not all that surprised this guy was able to take off and fly around for a while. I'm also not surprised he was unable to land it, and crashed.

Kreton?

The Pork of Seattle, aided and abetted by Courtney Gregoire and its other corporate sponsored Commissioners, backed all the dirtbag employers that have blown off SeaTac’s $15 minimum wage ordinance since it passed in 2013. Almost 5 years later some airline employees still make $15. News flash to Courtney—being stuck in permanent grinding poverty is stressful AF for these employees. Let’s remember this then Courtney tries to become Governor.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/some-airport-workers-still-earn-less-than-minimum-wage-as-sea-tac-law-leaves-a-confusing-patchwork/

Here’s the scoop on how the greedy MOFOs who run Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air manage to get away with paying their ground crews Dickensian wages.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/some-airport-workers-still-earn-less-than-minimum-wage-as-sea-tac-law-leaves-a-confusing-patchwork/

@6 And yet our honorable plane thief has a YouTube channel chronicling his vacations in Mexico, Alaska and France, including trips the Alsace and Loire region. Maybe he didn’t make enough for a night at the George V in Paris, but for 29-year-old solidly middle class kid, he was doing fine.

I would also add that it isn't as easy to secure an airplane as you might think. Unlike a car, it is impractical to just lock the door or have a single ignition key. Lots of people need access to it for a variety of reasons.

As a former aircraft mechanic, I needed access inside planes on a daily basis. I've started up engines and moved flight controls around. I've done everything short of taxi them in order to do repairs. Even for routine maintenance, at least 3-4 different mechanics need to check it out between each flight (propulsion, electronics, airframe, etc), sometimes many more for more serious repairs. That's the ground crew. You also need access for people that do cleaning and food service, though they wouldn't need the ability to start the engines or operate flight controls, obviously.

It sounds like this guy was part of the ground crew. So even if you had some sort of key system, he would have had access to it. So that wouldn't have prevented this suicidal flight.

I'm sure there is some sort of protocol that could be created to reduce the likelihood of something like this happening again, but it won't as simple as installing something like the key to your car.