The first four minutes of #Skyking: Panic in the Sky present an extraordinary piece of footage: CCTV from Aug. 10, 2018 of ground service agent Richard Russell breezing past security at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, clambering aboard a plane, and taxiing to the runway. Russell, a Horizon Air employee, stole the De Havilland Dash 8-400 aircraft and performed an unauthorized takeoff, startling Sea-Tac air traffic control (ATC) and prompting two Oregon Air National Guard fighter jets to take off in pursuit. After being asked to identify himself, Russell finally spoke: “Horizon guy, about to take off, it’s about to be crazy.”
As a ground service agent, the 28-year-old had neither a pilot’s license nor any flying experience or training. He was not a domestic terrorist, didn’t plan to use the aircraft to cause civilian casualties, and had no political agenda. As Russell says in the final section of the ATC recording, he was “just a broken guy, got a few screws loose, I guess.”
As explored in the new documentary, now streaming on Hulu after premiering at the South by Southwest Film Festival last month, Russell, who suffered from depression, was convinced he had no way out after commandeering the aircraft. After just over an hour in the air, he crashed into the sparsely populated Ketron Island in Puget Sound. He was the sole occupant of the plane. In the media frenzy that followed Russell’s death, his friends and family were heartbroken and tormented by mistruths that turned his tragedy into something it wasn’t. “He could never be a bad guy, he was always a good guy,” says Pat, Russell’s aunt, in an interview for the film.
Who was Richard Russell?
From the age of 6, Russell and his sisters were raised by their mother, Karen, who according to the documentary left an allegedly abusive husband and moved from Florida to Wasilla, Alaska. Russell was affectionately nicknamed “Beebo” by friends and family. He was well-liked at school, noted for being kind, thoughtful, and funny, and after graduation moved to North Dakota to play college football. Throughout Skyking, director Patricia E. Gillespie shows home movies of Russell’s childhood and adolescence, a warm and bittersweet contrast to the documentary’s main archive material—recordings of Russell’s extended conversation with ATC, which his relatives and friends listen and react to throughout the film. The only person who refuses to listen to the recordings in the documentary is Karen, who says, “I can’t hear his voice, because his voice was very special. He spoke so well.”…