The plane stolen from Sea-Tac Airport last Friday night cut in front of a Delta jet loaded with passengers waiting for takeoff, Seattle’s King 5 News reported.
Control tower audio recordings of a pilot in another airliner informed air traffic controllers that the Bombardier Q400 turboprop, with rogue Horizon Air ground service agent Richard Russell at the controls, had cut ahead of a Delta flight that was taxiing for takeoff.
"He came flying out of the cargo area in front of Delta,” the pilot said in the recording, King 5 noted.
When an air traffic controller asked which cargo area, the pilot said the one farther to the north, which is where the Horizon plane was believed to have been parked for the night.
It is unclear how far apart the two planes were but an airport spokesperson told King 5 that it was not a close call.
Russell managed to steal the empty commercial airliner that seats 76 people and fly it for 75 minutes, before fatally plunging it into a thickly forested island.
Investigators continued to piece the incident together but many unanswered questions remained.
It is known that Russell already had clearance to be in the area of the plane when he stole it, and that he used a tractor to rotate the plane 180 degrees into the proper position to taxi forward and progress toward the runway once he got the engines running, The Seattle Times reported.
He managed to remove the security tape from the plane's door, which was in place so that crew would know if any unauthorized persons had entered, and he was able to start the plane.
What was unclear is how he managed to get the plane all the way to the runway, then get on it and line up to take off before storming into takeoff.
It also remained unclear whether he had any previous flight experience.
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