This PSA had been brought to you by Australians
A lot of people are going "HOW DID HE DO THIS EHRMAHGERD ARENâT THESE PLANES GUARDED?! And like, no. Theyâre not. Planes donât have door locks. As long as you can physically access the door you can get on them. Iâm guessing he went to a hard stand and rolled a ladder or powered stair up to a door and got on. If he was a ramp worker he knew how to do that, I used to do what he did. Planes on the hardstand donât have people attending them, theyâre just parked for maintenance or storage or if thereâs no ramp available.
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Thatâs not entirely true. Small planes tend to have door locks, and some have ignition locks. Larger planes, like private jets, some have door locks, some donât, it varies even among private and commercial aircraft. Passenger jets and larger donât - but you need special equipment to access them and actually get the doors open.
As for the perpetrator of the above grand theft aero, he wasnât a ramp worker, he was an aircraft mechanic, so same difference really, he knew what was up.
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Ah, the initial report I read said he was a ramp worker. Being a mechanic explains how he was familiar with the startup and taxiing, mechanics are allowed to taxi aircraft under engine power for testing or moving to a repair area. As for locks I worked on and around several kinds of jet and turboprop commercial airliners and none of them had locks of any kind, I ought to have specified that commercial aircraft generally donât have locks.
As I understand it, for private aircraft of that size, itâs a purchase option. Commercial operations almost always go without, private owners often get them. And we both worked in Aviation, though I generally worked on larger aircraft, I did work on smaller private aircraft for a little while.
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Ah gotcha. My experience was entirely with commercial aircraft and I never saw a lock on anything so I figured it was the norm for commercial. In any case, you or I could easily have done what this guy did, which was the point I was trying to make to people freaking out on twitter, that anyone with access and a little know-how could steal an aircraft without too much effort at least to the point of getting it turned on and moving.
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Oh yeah, def. If you know enough to get it moving, you can almost certainly steal an aircraft. Both of us could have managed what he did. The biggest security feature on a commercial aircraft - apart from being parked in an airport, which are usually pretty secure locations - is the fact that the door is 12-15 feet off the ground.
In fact, I suspect he took a Dash-8 because you can operate the doors on those pretty trivially from the ground, rather than needing equipment - from what I remember, pop handle, wait ten, pull handle down, pull door down with the assist handle, done. Close it up, give the handrails a sharp pull, draw the door up by the rails, seat it in place, pull the locking handle down, and youâre pretty much good to go, no assist or equipment needed.
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With all this talk about stealing planes it reminds me of this:
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I donât know how big a wimpy is on average, but Itâs big enough to say - Youâd have to practice a bunch even if you were already a pilot, youâd have to take the roof and at least one of the walls off, and youâd need an EXTREMELY specific type of plane, but I can say with some confidence that it is possible to land an plane within the footprint of a Wimpyâs.
Behold, STOL bush pilot competitions:
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Iâm just guessing here but Iâm imagining another huge security feature is the fact that flying a multi engine commercial jet airliner is something not many can do. When I popped into my old teacherâs relatively realistic flight sim (maybe a few joysticks and levers and panels) I was decidedly unable to get the plane to do⊠literally anything. Couldnât pull away from the gate, or get near a runway. Couldnât crash into the airport. Couldnât do a thing.
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I am going to give this a whirl, not sure if I will stick to it for the long haul but willing to give it a shot.
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To the end.
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This little gem appeared in my spam folder.
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI)
Anti-Terrorist and Monitory Crimes Division.
Federal Bureau of Investigation.
J. Edgar. Hoover Building Washington D.C
https://www.fbi.gov/history/directors/christopher-wray
Good Day,
If you receive this email its means you are yet to receive your scam victim Compensation Funds. Through our Fraud Monitory Unit we have noticed that you have been transacting with some impostors and fraudsters who have been impersonating the likes of Mrs. Gill Marcus of the Reserve Bank Of South Africa, Mr. Patrick Aziza, Bode Williams, Frank Anderson, Stephen Allen, Emmanuel Nnorom, none officials of Oceanic Bank, Zenith Banks, Kelvin Young of HSBC, Ben of FedEx, Lamido Sanusi of CBN, Ibrahim Sule, Dr. Usman Shamsuddeen, Harry Thompson, Barr. Larry Gold and some impostors claiming to be The Federal Bureau of Investigation who exist in different part of the world e.g. Malaysia, Benin Republic, Ghana, Togo, United States, Nigeria, India, China and many others.
The Cyber Crime Division of the FBI, British Interpol and the African Truth and Reconciliation Commission gathered information from the Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC) on how some people have lost outrageous sums of money to these impostors as you have. As a result of this 1000 people where selected across the Globe for this SECOND BATCH OF THE YEAR COMPENSATION and Your email ( %0% ) was in the list submitted by our Monitoring Team observers and this is why we are contacting you, this have been agreed upon and have been signed by the US GOVERNMENT in conjunction with the IMF.
We have negotiated with the Federal Ministry of Finance that your payment totaling $5,500,000.00 USD (Five Million Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars) will be release to you as one of the selected Beneficiaries. To redeem your funds, you are hereby advised to contact the Compensation Center via email or phone for their requirement to proceed for the release of your funds
Dr. Derick Foster
Director- General
Compensation Award Payment Center
Email: fosterderick46@gmail.com
On contacting Dr. Derick Foster with your details your file would be updated with the necessary informationâs, below Dr. Derick Foster is obliged to give you a call and treat your case with utmost urgency as soon as you contact him and fill out your correct details including all reachable phone numbers for him to get in touch with you via phone or email.
Full Name/
Telephone Number/
Your Residential Address/
Gender:
Occupation:
New email address for this safety of this transaction
Most important: You will be asked by Dr. Derick Foster to pay $200 to get your Approval of Payment Warrant before your fund worth the sum of $5,500,000.00 USD (Five Million Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars) will be release to you finally.
Note: Disregard any email you get from any impostors or offices claiming to be in possession of your Compensation Funds and forward any emails you get from impostors to Dr. Derick Fosterâs office so he could act upon it immediately to help stop cyber-crime.
Best Regards,
Dir. Christopher Wray
J. Edgar Hoover Building
935 Pennsylvania Avenue,
NW Washington, D.C.
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Thatâs rather well done.
World on a Wire (German: Welt am Draht ), is a 1973 science fiction television serial directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Shot in 16 mm, it was made for German television and originally aired in 1973, as a two-part miniseries. Starring Klaus Löwitsch, it was based on the novel Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye. An adaptation of the Fassbinder version was presented as the play World of Wires , directed by Jay Scheib, in 2012.[1] Its focus is not on action, but on sophistic and philosophic aspects of the human mind, simulation, and the role of scientific research.