Congratulations, you did that,” he said. “Now let’s try to land that airplane safely and not hurt anybody on the ground.”
“All right!” Russell responded. His voice became wild as he broke in with a darker transmission: “Aw. Dammit. I don’t want to! I was kind of hoping that was going to be it. You know?”
The TSA flatly refuses to discuss the Horizon Air incident and would not release its own civil investigation into the 
matter. TSA would not arrange any interviews with Rolling Stone , even to discuss the insider threat generally. Administrator Pekoske did not respond to a direct request to discuss the incident, or his department’s stonewalling of it.
The agency determined Russell had no formal flight training, although he’d searched for instructional videos online and was “familiar with the checklist of actions for starting an airplane
Although Russell’s exploit resembled a hijacking, because of a lack of passengers, it was treated as a theft. Continue reading “The civilian pilot coaching Russell tried to settle the daredevil’s nerves: “All right, Rich, this is Captain Bill”