{"id":9876,"date":"2026-08-11T03:09:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T03:09:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/?p=9876"},"modified":"2026-08-11T03:09:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T03:09:19","slug":"fly-high-sky-king-i-wish-wed-known-you-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/11\/fly-high-sky-king-i-wish-wed-known-you-better\/","title":{"rendered":"Fly High Sky King, I Wish We’d Known You Better"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Greetings and Salutations!
On this date, August 10, 2018, Richard “Beebo” Russell went and stole a DeHavilland Dash 8-400, an un-passengered twin engined commercial turboprop from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and flew into history.

“Sky King” as he’s been dubbed was a 28 year old white male who’d been passed over for promotion at his job at the airport as a ground service agent or better known as a “ramp rat”. Being passed over for promotion despite his excellent reviews and work ethic sent him into a spiraling depression that eventually, eight years ago today, caused him to snap.

Instead of causing harm to others, he, without prior flight training, nor experience flew what can only be recognized now as a phenomenal aerial joyride. During his epic flight, he successfully navigated around the greater Oregon\/Washington area and flew to several natural landmarks, including Mount Rainier and the Olympic Mountains, and asked for the coordinates of an orca whale that had recently been in the news.

Realizing that this stunt was going to probably have some serious repercussions, his final act was to perform a barrel-roll over Puget Sound, and end his life by way of a kamikaze crash into Ketron Island, where he was the only casualty.

Since the incident, pilots and experts have noted that he was\u00a0\u201cuncannily skilled\u201d\u00a0at flying,\u00a0with Horizon Airline (which had been his employer at the time) CEO Gary Beck remarking, \u201cThere were some maneuvers that were done that were incredible.\u201d His only prior experience being from video games…

So this evening, raise a glass to Richard “Beebo” Russell.
Long may he be remembered for his honesty straightforward way of looking at life, and may he rest in peace.<\/p>\n\n\n

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More Later
Big Country<\/p>\n\n\n

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Greetings and Salutations!On this date, August 10, 2018, Richard “Beebo” Russell went and stole a DeHavilland Dash 8-400, an un-passengered twin engined commercial turboprop from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and flew into history. “Sky King” as he’s been dubbed was a 28 year old white male who’d been passed over for promotion at his job at … Continue reading “Fly High Sky King, I Wish We’d Known You Better”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9876"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9881,"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9876\/revisions\/9881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}