The Learjet on This Day in History

This day in history: The very first Learjet, the Learjet 23, took off from an airport in Wichita, Kansas, on this day in 1963, with test pilots Bob Hagan and Hank Beaird at the controls. The prototype jet, the product of the investment of William P. Lear, inaugurated an era of private jet airplanes, marketed to the wealthiest of individuals.

Learjet, founded in the late 1950s as Swiss American Aviation Corporation, has been a subsidiary of Canadian Bombardier Aerospace since 1990, which markets it as the "Bombardier Learjet Family". The 3,000th Learjet was delivered in June 2017. The Learjet line was once sufficiently popular that the Learjet name became synonymous and interchangeable with the terms business jet or private jet in the popular vernacular.

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Stealing an Airplane on This Day in History

 

This day in history: Richard Russell, 29, stole a Bombardier Q400 airplane on this day in 2018. The perpetrator was a Horizon Air ground service agent with no piloting experience. After Russell performed an unauthorized takeoff, two McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle fighters were scrambled to intercept the aircraft. Sea–Tac air traffic control made radio contact with Russell, the sole occupant, who described himself as a "broken guy, got a few screws loose, I guess." About 1 hour and 15 minutes after takeoff, Russell died by intentionally crashing the aircraft on lightly populated Ketron Island in Puget Sound.

There are quite a few incidents of this sort in the past, including one that happened in Australia on January 5 1977, where a disgruntled former employee of Connellan Airways (also known as Connair), flew a Beechcraft Baron into the Connair complex at the airport. The attack killed the pilot and four other people and injured four more, two of them seriously.

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