WASHINGTON — The stunning theft of a large commercial airplane from a major US airport Friday night took no other lives than the pilot’s, but the incident has heightened worries about gaps in American aviation security.
The theft and fatal crash of the 76-seat Bombardier Q400 near Seattle has raised questions about how a Horizon Air ground crew member could take control of an aircraft, get it in the air, and fly it willy-nilly over a major US metropolitan area for nearly an hour.
The 29-year-old hijacker, who officials identified as Richard B. Russell, performed midair stunts over Puget Sound after taking off from Seattle’s main airport.
When the control tower urged him to attempt to land the empty turboprop plane, he worried about harm to others on the ground. Better to take a nose dive, he said, ‘‘and call it a night.’’
Within minutes of the theft, two F-15s were scrambled from their Portland air base to intercept the aircraft, according to the North American Aerospace Defense Command. One of the F-15s was on loan from the 104th Fighter Wing at Barnes Air National Guard Base in Westfield, Mass.
The jets were armed but did not fire on the aircraft, said Air Force Captain Cameron Hillier, a NORAD spokesman.
Officials declined to describe the circumstances in which they would bring down an aircraft with a missile, citing operational security, but Hillier did say any decision would involve ‘‘a lot of collaboration’’ among pilots, commanders, on the ground, and others.
The F-15 pilots attempted to divert the aircraft toward the Pacific Ocean while maintaining radio communication with controllers. The jets flew close enough to make visual contact, Hillier said.
Russell eventually plunged the aircraft into woods on sparsely inhabited Kentron Island, 25 miles south of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
Airline executives said Russell had been an employee since 2015, and he had security clearances to gain access to the plane. He was also familiar with the towing tractors that move aircraft on the tarmac. He used one to back the plane out of a maintenance area.
Brad Tilden, the CEO of Alaska Airlines, which owns Horizon Air, told reporters Saturday the incident ‘‘is going to push us to learn from this tragedy.’’ But he and other airline executives declined to say what measures they could take to prevent someone with security badges from doing it again.
Tilden said his industry operates on the principle of checking the backgrounds of employees, not locking down airplanes in secure areas.
Congress is already seeking to tighten the screening of airport employees and may do so with more urgency now, said Mary Schiavo, the former inspector general of the US Transportation Department.
The United States has approximately 900,000 aviation workers, according to the most recent federal data, and Schiavo said screening procedures are ‘‘pretty rudimentary.’’
A bipartisan House bill, approved last year, calls for more stringent standards in employee background checks and increased surveillance of secure areas at airports. A Senate version of the bill has yet to come up for a vote.
