who stole the plane

[Guest]

Personally, I think we're all taking this far too seriously as flight simmers, etc.

A poor deranged chap, who had lost all hope, took his life by flying the thing that he knew he'd never be qualified to do as a professional. He didn't fly it well, (I'm sure he'd be the first to admit that) and, it didn't end well for anyone, especially him - his name was Rich.

May he rest in peace - his soul deserves it - it seems he found little of it while he was alive.

Ganter

 

 

[HiFlyer 9,343]

11 hours ago, skelsey said:

so by definition any piece on the subject is nothing more than speculation.

85% of the thread is speculation........

[HiFlyer 9,343]

Forum freeze and repeat posts

[HiFlyer 9,343]

Forum Glitch

[ErichB 3,638]

15 hours ago, Chock said:

In the UK, to work on the ramp, I had to have a criminal record history check (which, believe it or not, you have to pay for yourself lol), plus five-year work history check with quite detailed references, I also had to submit my tax records too, and had to do a compulsory GSAT test which covers security awareness and such. All this in order to gain an airside security pass which allows me to work on and around the footprint of aeroplanes. It is a tedious process and takes a while, but at no point does it really take into account someone's mental state.

There are some things which will prevent such a pass from being authorised, such as any history of fraud for example, and some jobs require deeper and longer criminal record history checks than the typical sort I had to undergo. In the UK, criminal convictions are generally listed on an easily accessible record for at least ten years, thereafter being classed as 'spent' for most offences unless they are of a particularly serious nature, so people are regarded as 'rehabilitated' if their criminal record is clean for five years. Some airside companies (not all of them) carry out their own independent drug tests as part of the recruitment process and one or two also do some other tests, but these are not that common. Really, there is little to nothing in place to check on people's mental health, there is a medical for driving airside vehicles, and this could potentially pick up some evidence of mental health issues I guess, but it would not of course detect something which had yet to occur.

Agree.  Assessment of the integrity of an individual is usually based on an assessment of anti-social conduct (criminal checks),  financial soundness and tax conduct.  If those records are clean, it is a relatively safe risk assessment (from an employment perspective) to assume that someone is a safe hire - i.e., unlikely to harm the reputation of your company,  or its clients.   It's near impossible to get access to medical records - although pre-employment medical screening (for certain roles) may ask you to declare any pre-existing medical conditions which could include psychiatric treatment.  Failure to declare anything which may be reasonable to declare, would compromise your fitness and propriety assessment - which means you fail on the principle of integrity anyway.

 

[Chock 17,769]

15 hours ago, tooting said:

That reporter Is deseparatly trying to find a link with 'video games' and this dude who stole the plane. If she can that before anyone else, make 'an exclusive' piece to write it will further her career. That is all she cares about. She doesnt care about the flight sim community, shes trying to please her editor to write a hit piece. 

The press don't care about this hobby. I can assure you. Shes shooting fish in a barrel trying to get a hook lead and desperatly hoping to get  us to say.... 

'oh yeah i know rich really  well, we used to play video games all the time, he used to always go on about stealing a dash 8, everyone knew he wanted to steal a plane, and and of course his boss knew too., Oh  I forget he used to baby sit my kids once a month too, good ole Rich'

She'll be looking for a picture of him playing fs9 with a MAGA hat on too.

That's what she is fishing for something like that, she couldn't give a toss about sids, stars, and the majestic q400

Your assessment may or may not be true, but it seems to have escaped your notice that you are making a sweeping generalisation about journalists when criticisising the notion that she is only interested in making a sweeping generalisation about people who play video games. Which is more than a little ironic don't you think?

Now granted, I know plenty of journos and used to be one myself for a long time, and it's true that many of them are self-serving, but I can promise you that they're not all like that. I certainly wasn't, but I'll also grant you that the pressure to tow the editorial line was one of my own motivations for leaving that job, so whilst I can say they're not all like that with confidence, a lot of them certainly are. I guess we'll find out when the presses roll.

[SimSlim 5]

15 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

Wouldn't a simple kill engine trigger transmitter/receiver installed on all aircraft solve this problem and be cost effective?  Transmitter/receiver only operates on short range and will only function when the aircraft is on the ground.

I like the idea but what about the takeoff roll, how do you prevent it from being accidentally activated then?  Rhetorically speaking.

[ErichB 3,638]

30 minutes ago, SimSlim said:

I like the idea but what about the takeoff roll, how do you prevent it from being accidentally activated then?  Rhetorically speaking.

If it is suspected that the flight has sinister or unauthorised intentions, then that doesn't really matter I'd have thought.  Better to kill it at any stage on the ground than have them get airborne.

[Christopher Low 5,331]

So, did this guy just roll the plane out to the runway and take off, without any conversation with ATC? I assume that is the case, since alarm bells would have been ringing if he had requested clearance to depart.

Edited August 15, 2018 by Christopher Low

[pete_auau 1,152]

1 hour ago, SimSlim said:

I like the idea but what about the takeoff roll, how do you prevent it from being accidentally activated then?  Rhetorically speaking.

yea than  what happens  when it  falls  in the  wrong  hands

[Jim Young 2,356]

1 hour ago, Christopher Low said:

So, did this guy just roll the plane out to the runway and take off, without any conversation with ATC? I assume that is the case, since alarm bells would have been ringing if he had requested clearance to depart.

Yes, that's correct as verified earlier by this video -

 

[fluffyflops 1,845]

4 hours ago, ErichB said:

Agree.  Assessment of the integrity of an individual is usually based on an assessment of anti-social conduct (criminal checks),  financial soundness and tax conduct.  If those records are clean, it is a relatively safe risk assessment (from an employment perspective) to assume that someone is a safe hire - i.e., unlikely to harm the reputation of your company,  or its clients.   It's near impossible to get access to medical records - although pre-employment medical screening (for certain roles) may ask you to declare any pre-existing medical conditions which could include psychiatric treatment.  Failure to declare anything which may be reasonable to declare, would compromise your fitness and propriety assessment - which means you fail on the principle of integrity anyway.

 

No it doesnt. In the UK, You only need a basic crb, not an enhanced crb to work as either ground staff, pilots or cabin crew 

A basic crb will only show spent convictions.  It will not show cautions, neither will it show if you have been put on a watch list, if there's any intelligence on you, or if youre on the sex offenders register. 

A enhanced one will show cautions, watch lists and the register.  But only a basic is required at the airport. 

An example of this is the guy yesterday at Westminster, the attempted tube bombing in West London, the Manchester bomber, the other westminister car attack, the guy who tried to get into downing Street with a knife,  and the guy who drove to the Windsor Castle pub instead of the actual Windsor castle.  All of them would of passed a basic CRB, as they had no record, but would of failed the enhanced crb as all of them where known to the police and/or mi5 and mi6

 

 

Edited August 15, 2018 by tooting

[ErichB 3,638]

26 minutes ago, tooting said:

No it doesnt. In the UK, You only need a basic crb, not an enhanced crb to work as either ground staff, pilots or cabin crew 

A basic crb will only show spent convictions.  It will not show cautions, neither will it show if you have been put on a watch list, if there's any intelligence on you, or if youre on the sex offenders register. 

A enhanced one will show cautions, watch lists and the register.  But only a basic is required at the airport. 

An example of this is the guy yesterday at Westminster, the attempted tube bombing in West London, the Manchester bomber, the other westminister car attack, the guy who tried to get into downing Street with a knife,  and the guy who drove to the Windsor Castle pub instead of the actual Windsor castle.  All of them would of passed a basic CRB, as they had no record, but would of failed the enhanced crb as all of them where known to the police and/or mi5 and mi6

 

 

We always do enhanced ones.  But I'm in the financial services industry.  Can't understand why other industries are a lighter touch - especially for airport staff

[ErichB 3,638]

6 minutes ago, ErichB said:

only need a basic crb, not an enhanced crb to work as either ground staff, pilots or cabin crew 

Well that's a risk waiting to realise.

[Chock 17,769]

Let's clear another thing or two up here about this incident. We've already touched on how various media outlets often report aeroplane-related incidents with wild inaccuracies, largely because of plain ignorance rather than any attempt to consciously deceive; this one appears to be garnering a few of those, notably that the guy managed to 'fly some incredible aerobatics despite having no formal training', and that he then chose to crash the aeroplane deliberately. What is making people say this? Neither of these things appear to be truly what happened.

Numerous news outlets have ascribed some nonsensical 'manoeuvers' to this flight, such as 'it did an upside down loop' (whatever one of those is), and that the airliner was 'filmed' (it was recorded on video actually, but we'll skip that inaccuracy) performing a 'loop the loop' (which it clearly was not).

As far as I can see from the video recording of the incident, at no point does the aeroplane ever perform a loop, what it actually does is commence a barrel roll, but when the guy realises the roll rate of the Q400 is not sufficient to complete the roll before the aeroplane will run out of altitude, he abandons the roll halfway through and switches to what aerobatic pilots would term an 'escape manoeuver', by basically performing a slightly off axis split-S to right the thing, which was probably just an intuitive decision that happened to be the right one under the circumstances. Now to some observers, that might be what they'd call a 'loop', but at best it is a half loop as a result of a badly executed attempt at a longitudinal aileron roll, which itself ended up being a barrel roll rather than what was probably an intended roll without losing so much altitude.

Assuming the track we've seen of the aircraft's heading, altitude and speed is indeed an accurate one, and particularly related to its last few seconds, where the aeroplane appears to be turning on its axis in one spot several times before it impacts the ground; and given that he appears to be concerned about the fuel level from comments he transmits to ATC. All this looks very much like one of the engines may have flamed out, which is, as we know, likely to cause some massively asymmetric thrust if one doesn't do something about that PDQ. So it's my assumption that, far from it being a deliberate decision to nose the thing in selflessly avoiding the populace, it's more a case of dumb luck that the thing came down where it did, without killing anyone in the process, probably as a result of an unrecoverable spin owing to the low altitude and the guy's inability to recognise the dangerous prospect of that occurring if one engine gives up before the other one does owing to fuel starvation.

Without some genuine FDR data or confirmation that the flight path data we've seen is accurate, some of the above is obviously a bit of an educated guess, but certainly some of the reporting has been ridiculously inflated in relation to the guy demonstrating a mysteriously impressive level of skill, and it's not even certain that he deliberately wished to kill himself either; he mentions wishing to apologise, which might seem like a farewell, but he also mentions jail time too and jokes about being offered a job if he lands it. Not only this, he also says he doesn't want to go near a military field for fear they might have Triple A. Do these sound like the comments of someone resigned to death?

Edited August 15, 2018 by Chock