US6 min(s) read
Published 16:17 11 Aug 2026 GMT
The eighth anniversary of the night Richard Russell stole an empty passenger plane from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and flew it across Puget Sound until he crashed and died has just passed.
Every year on August 10, the same clips resurface online.
The radio transmissions, the footage of a Bombardier Q400 doing a barrel roll over the water with two F-15 fighter jets trailing behind it.
The voice of a 28-year-old ground service agent who had never flown a plane in his life, talking calmly to air traffic control while he worked out how to end his own.
Russell has been known online as 'Sky King' ever since.
Rolling Stone called him a folk hero, and Hulu made a documentary about the incident - #SkyKing, which premiered in April this year.
The story is as strange and sad now as it was in 2018.
On the evening of August 10, 2018, Russell, a ground service agent for Horizon Air who worked on the tow team repositioning aircraft on the tarmac, drove a Bombardier Q400 turboprop to runway 16C at Sea-Tac and took off.
He had no pilot's licence and the plane had no passengers as it was not scheduled to fly again that day.
An Alaska Airlines jet on the ground reported seeing the aircraft begin its takeoff roll with its wheels smoking.
He was airborne by 7:32pm local time.
Two F-15 fighters were scrambled from Portland, armed with air-to-air missiles, and reached supersonic speeds on the way to intercept him.
They generated sonic booms across the region - a refuelling tanker was also launched from Fairchild Air Force Base and all flights in and out of Sea-Tac were suspended.
Russell flew for about 75 minutes, but he definitely made use of that time.
He performed loops and manoeuvres over the water.
At one point, he executed a barrel roll, recovering approximately 10 feet above the surface.
A veteran pilot later said the manoeuvre 'seemed pretty well executed, without either stalling or pulling the wings off'.
At 8:43pm, he crashed the aircraft into the sparsely populated Ketron Island in Puget Sound.
He was the only person on board. Nobody else was hurt.
You can see the whole story in the video below.
The radio transmissions were recorded and posted online almost immediately.
They are the reason the story has endured the way it has.
Russell was calm throughout.
Polite and - at times - almost funny.
He told the controller he was 'just a broken guy, got a few screws loose, I guess. Never really knew it until now.'
When ATC suggested he land the plane at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, he turned it down.
"Those guys will rough me up if I try and land there," he said.
"I think I might mess something up there, too. I wouldn't want to do that."
He asked ATC if Alaska Airlines would give him a job as a pilot if he managed to land the aircraft safely.
The controller said they would probably give him a job doing anything if he pulled it off.
"Yeah right! Nah, I'm a white guy," Russell replied.
He asked for the coordinates of an orca that had been in the news that week, telling the controller that he wanted to go see it.
Then, he told ATC he had learned to fly from video games and reiterated that he did not want to hurt anyone.
After the barrel roll, ATC asked him to try to land. His response is the line people remember most.
"I don't know. I don't want to. I was kind of hoping that was gonna be it, you know?"
He added that he 'wasn't really planning on landing it.'
In his final minutes, he apologised to his friends and family.
Richard Russell was born in Key West, Florida before he moved to Wasilla, Alaska, aged seven.
Everyone called him Beebo.
He was a fullback on the high school football team and scored six touchdowns in his senior year.
Russell went to college in North Dakota, then transferred to a community college in Oregon, where he met his wife at a Campus Crusade for Christ meeting.
They married in 2012 and opened a bakery together in North Bend, Oregon.
In 2015 they sold that business so his wife could be closer to her family before moving to Sumner, Washington.
Russell got a job with Horizon Air and had been on the tow team for about four years by the time the incident happened.
Co-workers described him as quiet and well liked, active in his church and a leader in the local Young Life Christian youth ministry.
He was studying social science through Washington State University's online campus and had planned to either move into management at Horizon Air or become a military officer.
During his conversation with ATC, he made one comment about his job.
"Minimum wage, we'll chalk it up to that. Maybe that will grease some gears a little bit with the higher-ups."
The FBI investigated for three months and found no evidence of terrorism, criminal activity, or a clear motive.
They interviewed colleagues, friends and family, reviewed his text messages.
They found nothing that explained why he did what he did.
His family released a statement the next day.
It simply said: "We are stunned and heartbroken."
Because the transmissions are unbearable.
A man who sounds kind, self-aware, occasionally funny, and completely resigned to the fact that he is about to die.
He doesn't sound angry, he doesn't sound like someone making a political statement.
He sounds like someone who got into a plane because he didn't know what else to do, and then had the strangest, saddest 75 minutes of his life talking to a stranger on the radio while F-15s flew behind him.
The internet latched on to him almost immediately.
'Sky King' became a meme, then a tribute, then something closer to mythology.
T-shirts were made. Songs were written. Rolling Stone published a long-form profile in 2021 calling him 'The Sky Thief'.
In April this year, the documentary #SkyKing premiered at SXSW and was picked up by Hulu. It was made in dedication to Russell.
In April 2022, the FBI released over 500 pages of documents from its investigation.
They confirmed what had already been widely understood. Russell acted alone. He intended to die. Nobody saw it coming.
He was 28 years old. He had no pilot's licence. He performed a barrel roll 10 feet above the water in a plane he had stolen an hour earlier, and the last thing he said to the person trying to help him was that he was kind of hoping the barrel roll would be it.
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 by calling or texting 988. In the UK, you can contact the Samaritans on 116 123.
