The Internet's Favorite Hijacker: The Tragic Tale of Sky King

on August the 10th of 2018 just after 7:30 p.m. a man named Richard Russell stole an Alaskan Airlines passenger plane from the Seattle Washington Airport what happened over the course of the next hour and 10 minutes would go on to change Aviation and the internet forever hello everybody today we're going to be talking about the legend of Sky King one of the most remembered and beloved hijackers in American history and perhaps most importantly we're going to talk about how the same guy who caused two military fighter jets to chase him down and caused people to

be afraid of flying on a level not seen since 9/11 has also joined the digital Hall of Fame as one of the internet's favorite anti-heroes even if you're familiar with this story you still might want to stick around because there's been new developments with this case as recently as last year that's because on April the 14th of 2022 the FBI finally released all of their reports regarding the investigation a document that's over 500 pages long plus a lot of new information regarding Richard has come from co-workers and friends and interviews in the past several years

and if you have never heard of this story before and have no idea who I'm talking about then you are in for a treat today the story of Richard Russell somehow manages to be terrifying inspiring and ridiculous all at once and I for one am so excited to talk about it so without further ado let's get into the story of a notorious and controversial figure that will almost certainly put my name on any list it isn't already on at this point but before we get into something that is dangerous that I do not condone let's

talk about something that is subtle yet just as devastating and is also dangerous and I do not condone and that's identity theft in the Modern Age of our internet we use our names email addresses and passwords willy-nilly across the web without expecting it to ever come back to harm us and and while a lot of us just do this for ease of access there's a lot of bad people out there and it can be scary not knowing where your information's going to wind up but knowing is half the battle and there's no one better to

have on your side of the fight than today's sponsor Aura Ora will identify data Brokers that are exposing your information and automatically submit opt out request on your behalf see anytime you use your information online there's a chance it could fall into the hands of telemarketers robocallers or spammers and these data Brokers are legally required to get rid of that information if you ever request for them to however the process is needlessly complicated because that's how they keep the racket going so Ora specializes in doing the hard part for you Ora scours the web to

see if your information has fallen into the wrong hands and automatically tells them to lose whatever they've got it even opts you out of things like junk mail or telemarketing lists or even monitors your email and passwords to see if they were involved in a data breach and gives you recommendations on what to do as a personal endorsement I began using Aura in preparation for this ad so whenever I was filling out everything on their website I used my personal email and not the one that I give out to the public for like you guys

to send emails to like the one I use for private communication I put that into Aura and then sure enough in December of 2022 I had gone to a website that had a bunch of like Journal information uh and articles about some video I was researching I actually think it's a video you guys haven't seen yet anyway I went on that website and it turns out from that aura identified that my email had got tied into a data broker scam so thanks to Aura I was able to clear that up but without Aura for one

I wouldn't have known that my email was compromised in the first place until I started getting really weird fishing emails or whatever and two I wouldn't have known what to do afterwards so they've already already got me sold on it and that's not even getting started on the Ora app that has a VPN a password manager real-time credit and identity theft monitoring internet paral controls and even protects your devices from malware or even has a lot of features for the family like preventing inappropriate websites from popping up excessive screen time from becoming a problem Aura

is just about every Internet safety tool you'll ever need in one app trust me I'm as chronically online as the next guy I mean look at my job I know how much fun the internet can be but I also know how dangerous it can be as well but with aura we can get rid of that last part and get back to doing whatever we love most and right now there's never been a better time to get in on the offer that's because if you head to the link in the description ora.com Swindon you'll be able

to try Aura for 2 weeks absolutely free that is right a 2E free trial to Aura and as much as I hate to say it you're probably going to be shocked shocked by how much information they find of yours just floating around on the web so try out Aura hopefully you fall in love with it as much as I have and get back to having a sound mine whenever you're browsing the web again that's either head to ora.com Swindon or the link in the description to get in on this fantastic offer today thank you all

so much for watching the ad and thank you so much to Aura for sponsoring this video and saving my email address it really does mean the most hope you all check them out link is in the description and we are back to the video we are going to go ahead and get into it but as always thank you for watching let me set the stage for you a little bit before we get into the middle of the action the Seattle Tacoma Airport of Washington state is according to a pilot who was interviewed by Rolling Stones

for this story The Ninth busiest airport in America because of that as you can imagine there's a lot of different employees going about their daily tasks without paying a lot of mind to what the others are doing because of this no one thought it suspicious when a ground Ops employee named Richard Russell began moving a plane using an air tug for clarification an air tug is a device used to move or rotate planes when they're on the runway or in an aircraft hanger and a ground operations employee is exactly what the name sounds like ground

Ops are normally the people who are doing things like loading Luggage in and out of planes or directing planes into the appropriate docking station this plane which was more specifically a horizon q400 turbo prop passenger aircraft was in the shop due to a problem with one of the passenger doors but other than that the plane worked just fine as everyone would soon find out the plane was a part of the Alaska Airlines Fleet and featured the tail number of n449qx a number that would become sort of Infamous in aviation circles after this incident most websites

I found list the occupancy of the plane to 76 passengers however for some reason the FBI's report said that it was a 90 passenger plane so maybe this was some kind of special edition that held an additional 14 seats somewhere or the FBI got it wrong and it's actually 76 either way pretty big plane the plane itself was over 100 ft long and nearly impossible to operate without a co-pilot or at least that's what everyone thought at 7:15 p.m. Richard Russell uses the air tug to rotate the plane 180° so that it faces the runway

from there Richard removes the stopping blocks from underneath the landing gear of the plane and walks back and forth from the air tug to the cockpit seemingly trying to start the engine now again on its own this wouldn't raise any suspicions other than the fact that he's alone Someone Like Richard has the qualifications to turn on a plane in order to taxi it from one part part of the airport to the other for maintenance or what have you the first sign that something was a Miss would occur when after disconnecting the air tug from the

plane the plane began to roll backwards causing Richard to run next to it open the door jump in and take control of the wheel again this process is meant to be a two-person job Richard then taxies the plane not to another service station or hanger but instead to the main Seattle Airport run way as you could imagine the airport was pretty busy and while there's normally a guy up in the tower controlling what planes land where and what planes take off at what time but Richard who has no connection to air traffic control is out

there according to one report treating it like road traffic in other words he's acting like it's a stoplight intersection and letting one person pass before he goes and then breaking to let another person pass as soon as the air control tower realizes they don't know who's flying that plane Panic ensues one of the pilots who was cut off by Richard on the runway said that it appeared he had left the brakes on the landing gear as all of the wheels were smoking the pilots realizing that something's gone ay begin to yell at air traffic control

to call the military because there's been a hijacking from the control tower to pilots and passengers everyone had to watch helplessly as at 7:33 p.m. Richard Russell took flight moving from his initial contact with the plane to takeoff in 18 minutes as you can imagine this was immediately a huge deal immediately everyone's primary concern was some kind of terrorist attack and if not that some kind of heist or Ransom after all people just don't steal passenger planes for no reason within minutes Pilots at the Portland Air National Guard base began suiting up to combat again

what they believe to be some kind of terrorist attack back Air Traffic Control continued to try to get in contact with whoever was in the cockpit but whoever it was wouldn't pick up as everyone is panicking flights in and out of Seattle are being cancelled local population centers are being warned that an attack may be imminent the fighter jets are about to arrive 10 minutes into the flight the person inside of the cockpit picks up right 07 apprach welcome final Runway 16 right welome man I'm a ground service AG I don't know what that is

to Portland Seattle 6 is filed at 77 started get it to go uh a couple hours I guess but um yeah I wouldn't know how to land it I wasn't really planning on Landing it so to ask the question that you're all probably thinking who was Richard Russell well Richard Russell was born on September the 19th of 1989 he was born in Key West Florida however at the age of seven his family moved to Wasilla Alaska and it was here in Alaska that Richard would find a home from a young age his friends and family

began to refer to Richard as bio and young Richard bio Russell became a crowd favorite among his friends and family after Middle School Richard would attend Wasilla High School which is the same high school that Sarah Palin attended that has no relation to the video I just felt compelled to mention that for some reason Richard excelled not only socially but in athletics as well he played a lot of sports like wrestling and track and field but where he really shined was in football Richard played as a fullback and was hailed by many to be one

of the star players of the league so much so that when College rolled around Richard went to North Dakota at the Valley City State University to play football however while a prodigy in high school it seems that didn't transfer well into college and after only a season of not a lot of play time and poor performance performance when he did Richard ended up leaving he instead moved to Oregon and began attending the southwestern Oregon Community College another important aspect of Richard Russell's life is that he was a devout Christian so with a lot more free

time in Oregon because he's no longer playing football Richard decides to take a leadership role in various Ministries he was a big leader in his local young life group young life is an organization that primarily works with high school or college age students and various other organizations like campus Crusade for Christ as a matter of fact it was at one of these campus Crusade meetings that Richard would meet Hannah his future wife it turns out the two of them had an interest in cooking so while in Oregon they opened their own restaurant called Hannah Marie's

artisian breads however according to most interviews and people who just knew the family it seems that Hannah was getting homesick and wanted to live closer to her family so in 2015 the two of them sold the business business and eventually began living in suar Washington once there Richard got his job with Horizon Air and even transferred to Washington State where he graduated in 2017 with his bachelor's degree in social studies it was actually during his time in college that he had to make various blog posts and videos of himself for assignments and it's from some

of these blog post and videos that we learn more about him for example the fact that he's not exactly thrilled with his job and while he thinks planes are really cool he hates the mundane nature of his current profession however one of the perks of the job at least according to him was free travel and getting to see his family back in Alaska whenever he wanted so why was this guy who by all outside accounts was living a perfectly normal happy married lifestyle now in the cockpit of a stolen passenger plane well what would become

apparent in the eventual interviews and investigation as well as the recording between air traffic control and Richard himself is that Richard wasn't in the best state of mind again this will become apparent with some of the sections of the tape recording that you're going to hear in a bit but from the now released FBI reports it seems that those around Richard had some sign that something was about to go wrong right before it did now according to everyone who the FBI interviewed around Richard as well as various Journal articles and news sources uh everyone said

that Richard was an incredibly kind guy if a little quiet but once you got him talking he wouldn't stop and he wanted to be best friends with everyone so his co-workers began to notice a couple weeks before August the 10th that he seemed uncharacteristically down a lot of sections from the FBI report are redacted just because they probably mention individuals names or addresses or phone numbers or what have you but from the sections that we can see we see that on August the 3rd he mentioned to a coworker that he felt he wasn't living up

to what others thought of him and then only a couple of days later his family held an intervention for something again the specifics have been redacted uh we could speculate if it was perhaps depression maybe he mentioned he was going to harm himself uh maybe it was something drug or substance related um I don't really feel like taking guesses as to what man's mental health was but you can we can assume from what we have after this intervention the family noted that he seemed to be doing better although he was also seeming to drink in

excess and then it would only be 5 days after this intervention that the hijacking would occur now while this may lead you to believe that perhaps it was some short notice spur of the- moment thing that caused the hijacking to occur there were signs of some kind of suspicious activity at least a year in advance because on at least two occasions within the previous year Richard had gotten in trouble and by in trouble I mean told to leave because he and another employee were standing in a cockpit when they weren't supposed to be and quote

flipping and pointing at switches now of course you could chalk this up to just general interest with planes but given where it went it's understandable why that activity seems suspicious in hindsight now there's also another important question to ask Richard's entire job was to just do ground maintenance for plane sure he knew how to taxi them around but that was with the assistance of an air tug and another person so how did this guy learn how to take off and fly a plane on his own well I don't think I have to tell you in

the Modern Age of the Internet it's not hard to look up a user manual for a kind of plane or even a flight simulator for that specific model out of all of Richard's co-workers that were interviewed none of them said that they knew of him having a flight Sim but that each of them individually knew it was pretty easy to get a flight Sim also the FBI raided and investigated his house after this and even though they don't mention that they found like a flight Sim on his computer or anything I don't know how well

they investigated so he almost certainly had something I mention that to say I don't think this was a short notice thing it takes a long time to learn how to effectively fly a passenger plane and while a lot of people point to the intervention and the mention a week prior that he felt wasn't living up to expectations as being maybe a fight he got into or some short notice thing that led to this I think that the events of August the 10th were coming for a very long time one Theory poised by The Rolling Stones

article that I mentioned earlier through interviews of people who were friends with Richard is that due to various concussions and head trauma that Richard received while playing football perhaps CTE was a part of the issue or basically the idea that for those of you who may not know uh chronic long-term head trauma can lead to things like increased aggression uh instability increased risk-taking decisions Etc and while I don't think that was entirely what was at play here I would certainly be willing to believe that it was a factor one more thing I want to mention

from this Rolling Stones article which the article itself is great Tim Dickinson did a fantastic job at compiling it however there's this one part that's really funny and I understand that internet culture is very weird and hard to understand from the outside looking in but that being said I have to read this paragraph So This is during a point in the article where it's discussing potential warning signs or Clues people may have been able to see if Richard left any hints as to what he's about to do and it closes with Russell also kept a

Pinterest profile where he went by the handle B bro and collected memes including several from the satirical sit despair.com in July of 2018 days before his unauthorized departure Russell pinned an image to a board called dank memes it was it was a Photoshop of a chubby kid with brown hair dressed up as Sonic the Hedgehog with a with a sad distant look in his eyes it's not a spitting image but it's hard to not see Russell in the child's face no matter how fast I run the text reads I cannot run away from the pain

and and and like yeah yeah sure maybe like ironic memes being used by people who mean them unironically sure but just just when he said you can see Russell in the child's face I lost it like we have lost the plot boys and perhaps there's no better sign of Richard's state of mind or his character than the events of the flight itself as soon as contact is established with Richard it's apparent that he's just up here to have fun all righty um yeah I just kind of want to do a couple Maneuvers to see what

it can do before I put her down you know it's apparent that he has no real plans as to what he's going to do up here and disturbingly he doesn't even have any plans to land the first thing he does is begin banking the plane around Mount reneer as he comes out of this he immediately starts throwing up it's around this time that it sounds like Richard is losing some of the gumption he had initially like early on you could hear like the adrenaline and the excitement in his voice but now there seems to be

a lot more regret I'm sorry say that again sorry U my mic came off I threw up a little bit uh you know I I uh hold shoot man I'm sorry about this I hope this doesn't ruin your day air traffic control begins to try to find places for him to land eventually suggesting a military base but Richard says he doesn't want to do that because he'll get beat up that's the uh that's mord field oh man those guys will rough me up if I uh tried Landing there I think I I think I might

mess something up there too I wouldn't want to do that oh hopefully oh they probably got anti-aircraft no they don't have any of that stuff uh we we're just trying to find a place for you to land safely at around 8:15 pm the Jets from the Oregon National Guard show up it took them about 7 minutes to get from their base to Richard's plane so that meant there was about half an hour between Richard taking off and the Jets being mobilized we'll talk about that near the end it's also around this time that Richard begins

to realize the gravity of what he's done making the comment that he think thinks he'll get jail for life for doing this this is probably uh like jail time for life huh I mean I would hope it is for a guy like me at one point Air Traffic Control gets a hold of a pilot who can direct Richard on how to successfully land the plane 22 cross6 left contact just flying the plane around you seem comfortable with that oh hell yeah it's a blast man I played video games before so I uh you know I

know what I'm doing a little bit see Not only was Richard an inexperienced pilot behind the wheel he was an inexperienced pilot behind the wheel of a notoriously hardto land plane this model of plan's designation was a dash8 among airports however Pilots would refer to it as a crash 8 due to the plane's quick aptitude for rising or falling everyone around Richard knows this and begins to try to direct him towards something that will have the least likely amount of surrounding casualties for example examp at one point Richard flies over a rather small air strip

and asks about Landing there but the pilot keeps trying to tell him to go back to the military base because for one the military base air strip is much bigger and two there's less people near the runway eventually they just start asking him if he's willing to put the plane down in the water for the same reason but as discussed it seems that Richard doesn't plan on Landing there's one point after Richard asked the pilot to help him pressurize the cabin it's the only time over the whole call that we hear Richard get anything close

to Violent okay thank you of6 American 7 Alaska 691 damn it Andrew people's lives are at stake here a rich don't don't say stuff like that no I didn't told you I'm not I don't want to hurt I just want you to whisper sweet nothing in my ear and so maybe he was just panicking in fear for his life or in fear for the life of others that he didn't take into account when he got in the plane but I digress or maybe the depressurization was getting to him and he was in a comparatively unsteady

state of mind while behind the wheel of a passenger plane eventually Richard ask the pilot he's speaking to if he thinks he can get a job after this not concentrate so much on flying the airplane hey you think if I land this successfully last give me a job as a pilot uh you know I think they would give you a job of doing anything if you could pull this off yeah [Applause] right no I'm a white guy before remarking that he wants to go see the Orca context for that there was a local story at

the time of a mother Orca whose baby died off the coast of like the Oregon Washington area and scientists had been tracking her because she was like carrying her dead baby and it was like a real sad story in the news at the time so that's what Richard's referring to when he says he wants to take the plane to go see that Orca there's also one part during the call when when not really asked specifically anything like oh why did you do this or why did you steal the plane he just says this okay you

know how fast you're going to hold behind uh 2021 uh minimum wage we'll we'll chalk it up to that maybe that'll Grease the gears a little bit with the higher up maybe uh yeah while of course there's a certain level of sarcasm there it also points to him just overall not really enjoying his position in life the two most heartbreaking moments to me of the entire flight logs are for one when he starts to take into account his family and the people in his life who will miss him when he's gone I got a lot

of people that care about me and uh it's going to disappoint them since to hear that I did this um I would like i' like to apologize to each and every one of them um just a broken guy got a few screws loose I guess never really knew it until now and another when he kind of mentions that he didn't get the clarity coming up here that he hoped he would um just kind of Li headed dizzy um man and you know the sights went by so fast too I was thinking like I'm going to

have this moment of Serenity you know be able to take all in all the sights uh there's a lot of pretty stuff but um I think they're prettier in a different context another important detail about this story to mention is that people on the ground around the area saw the plane behaving you know sporadically and thought something was weird so a bunch of people because it's 2018 started taking cell phone videos I mention that now because one cell phone was able to record one of the wildest Maneuvers in aviation history at least considering the pilot

and plane the maneuver was performed with Richard asked the tower if he can perform a Barrel Roll I think I'm uh I'm going try to do a barrel roll and if that goes good I'll just go nose down and all the night I mean he's more wandering out loud it's not like he's going to listen to what they have to say at this point anyway so while being followed by two Jets and Lord knows how many people on the ground Richard does [Music] this my favorite part about the barrel roll other than the fact that

he did it is that everyone connected to this story regardless of if they loved Richard or hated him everyone acknowledges that the barrel roll was cool The Horizon CEO in a statement he would give the next day said that it was quote incredible and the two fighterjet pilots that were following Richard said this I should mention their code word for Richard's plane they were chasing was toy one it stood for track of Interest one so One Pilot says toy one just completed a barrel roll the other pilot responded with confirm he did a barrel roll

and the first pilot says affirm before chuckling and saying he cleared the surface of the Water by approximately 10 ft which is professional military speak for bro did you see that oh I forgot to mention this uh I want to mention this because I'm sure a lot of people clicked on this video just cuz they're plain Enthusiast uh the Two fighter jets that were chasing him were McDonald Douglas f-15c Eagles so there's some someone out there who's really glad I mentioned that even the control tower he was in communication with admitted that he pulled it

off and it was pretty good but now it's time to come back uh and then Richard says one of the other most depressing things in the entire call all right R Captain Bill congratulations you did that now let's uh let's try to land that airplane safely and not hurt anybody on the ground all right ah damn it I don't know man I don't know I don't want to I was kind of hoping that was going to be it you know eventually the plane Finds Its way over the southern point of an island called ketrin Island

again in Washington while speaking to the control tower about being low on gas Russell remarks that he believes one of the engines is going out in a move that investigators would later find to be intentional the nose of the plane began to barrel down 6 seconds after this maneuver the plane crashed into the woods of ketrin Island Washington the plane made an explosive impact with the ground and the fire that ensued covered an area of about 2 Acres before firefighters arrived on a ferry and were able to stop the Flames ketan Island itself had a

low population only about 17 people and while if Richard continued forward for just a couple seconds longer he probably would have hit an occupied cabin on the island despite that no one in the crash was injured beside Richard himself and as you can match and Richard Russell did not survive the crash his death was ruled to be caused by several traumatic injuries and to be of course self-inflicted now we'll talk about Richard in a second but I want to mention a few more interesting facts and developments that came because of this case for one this

was kind of a PR nightmare especially for Alaska Airlines and Horizon because while this could pretty much have happened to any Airline it was specifically theirs so they got the heat for it this got really controversial with airport security because only a month earlier in July of 2018 the TSA had delivered a report to their head administrator citing the potential of inside threats basically as I'm sure we're all aware airport security is pretty tight since 9/11 or at least it's pretty tight for passengers on planes the concern that the TSA raised in July of 2018

is that employees are pretty laidback sure you don't want your employees coming into work every day and getting padded down but there's been a lot of stories of employees or TSA agents getting guns or other kinds of weapons onto planes so the fact that the TSA was already aware this could be an issue and then this event happened cause a pretty big storm in the media and the really interesting thing about this case from an investigative standpoint is that absolutely nothing went wrong at least nothing went wrong as far as procedure goes than think about

it there's only a few people who have access to planes at any point and they're not taught how to fly them uh people are given background checks but Richard passed every background check it's not like he had some kind of criminal record there's no precedent or at least there wasn't a precedent for an employee who's worked at the company for 3 and A2 years been faithful and solid up until this point just one day deciding with information he learned on the internet to steal a plane and take off because of this event airports changed a

lot of their methods for employee security for example many implemented a rule that even workers on the ground cannot go out to a plane without a second person or many have implemented that airport employees are given regular mental health screenings I'm not sure if that would have done anything in Richard's case but it's still a nice thought furthermore norrad the organization that was responsible for the response time of the Jets that came to intercept Richard while sure Richard wasn't planning to attack a populated area or anything but if he were to if someone was to

steal a plane in his position to cause a lot of damage he would have already crashed it by the time the jet showed up so norrad changed their response time protocols you no longer have to go to the top brass to get clearance if the guy at the location feels that they need a jet response then he can order it and then answer for it later during his flight he went as far east as Graham Washington and as far west as Anderson Island Washington in a flight that lasted for a total of an hour and

10 minutes and at the end of the day the only definitive physical damage that Richard caused was 17 incoming flights were diverted to nearby airports 75 were delayed five were cancelled the area of kran Island 2 Acres of it was destroyed and on fire and one $30 million plane was crashed interestingly according to the Seattle police report the police went to check for the audio logs of the call on August the 13th however by unknown means the call had already leaked online by August the 11th and as soon as that call from the cockpit went

online a legend was born the Mythos of the Sky King exploded people began to praise him as a hero of the clouds as the everyday man who decided to stick it to his bosses and with his final moments do something worth remembering some ascribe this almost Robin Hood Persona to him and most of the tributes for Richard everything from Facebook groups to subreddits describes him as this misunderstood hero of the Common Man I mean even the name Sky King implies a level of reverence and what do I think of the Sky King do I think

he lives up to the legend do I think that the stories and the myths around him are all true no but also yes the idea that Richard was this troubled individual who set off for the clouds and then everything just kind of made sense up there and he lived his life in a manner that if he could answer for he'd agree was the right way to go out I don't think that's true I think about that one section of the call to me probably the most depressing part when he's talking about the view and he's

he's describing how he thought it would look one way but it really doesn't from up here another detail that came out in reports is that apparently right before the crash he sent a text message to his wife uh and the specific message has never been made public but according to the family the general gist of it was that he's sorry and she deserved better from friends and family who have spoken of Richard it seems they kind of resent the moniker of Sky King because with his final Act he caused a lot of damage absolutely he

was in an unstable state of mind I understand that but it seems like from all accounts we have that he had a family who truly loved and cared for him and wanted to see him get better only a few days before this event they staged an intervention and wanted to see him come out of it as a better man and to theorize otherwise or theorize some malicious intent on their behalf is unfair to the family and yes I don't believe he intended to hurt anyone with his h jacking however stealing a plane that you think

you can fly and then flying it over heavily populated areas only to put it down in an island that you're pretty sure doesn't have anyone on it is insanely Reckless like I said there was a cabin on that island right above where he crashed the plane not to mention he started a forest fire that took up 2 acres and it seems like every year there's some colossal fire out west that results in the deaths of a lot of people he could have very well caused one of of those and yes even though those things didn't

happen if nothing else he left Hannah as a widow but with that being said I get it one of the most interesting things about Sky King to me is anytime I see like a true crime case so to speak like you hear about someone murdering someone else or you know something to that effect everyone wants to know the motive right they're always like oh why oh did the person they kill like try to do something to them did they have this relationship you know people theorize whatever but I I remember when Sky King happened I

remember within a couple days of Richard stealing the plane of seeing like the memes and the stories online I didn't see a single person ask why he did it there was just this kind of this solemn understanding almost of yeah yeah I I get it someone who is unhappy with their life and suffering from Lord knows what kind of mental illness there's almost I hate to admit it because like I mentioned earlier it was an act that endangered a lot of people and hurt a lot of people emotionally but in isolation there's almost a poetry

to someone who has spent their entire career at least the past four years of his life watching planes take off every day and then one day he just wants to be in one it's no sec secret that by and large the fellas aren't doing great as of lately depression and self harm rates are consistently On The Rise and there's just a lot of people who while the rest of us are enjoying life and getting by they just can't and because of that there's a lot of people who relate to Richard A lot of people who

see the story of someone who had had enough was at his end but before he went just wanted to see how big this guy could get is that truly what I think he is is do I think he found some kind of clarity or Nirvana almost while he was up there no because that's never the answer anyone who survives that kind of situation comes out of it saying that it absolutely wasn't the answer and I wish almost that I could say he did have peace in the end but from his words and the text he

sent his wife and whatnot it seems that he didn't and that is tragic but I also understand seeing a guy steal a plane just so he could do a barrel roll I understand why people call him the Sky King shortly after the hijacking uh which fun fact legally was never called a hijacking because no passengers were kidnapped or stolen during this event uh instead it was just called a theft which funny note but in the days following the theft the police would search Richard's Honda Civic they would search his house and they would search his

locker at work in his locker locker 55 that had an unlocked pad lock on the front police found things like various snacks his wallet and a red notebook in the notebook a few various phrases and comments were written down the most interesting among them was this he wanted to create something something with a profound insight and charm he had once been confident in his writing so he gave that a shot during one of his many breaks at work he decided to go for it rather than use the downtime to escap in books or social media

he would use it to benefit his all mankind he sat in the corner of the dilapitated locker room searching for the concepts he wanted to convey what did he know the most about what did he feel strongly about several questions fizzled in his mind but no resolutions were made it all felt so irrelevant he was a cure nothing was worthy enough for the the paper I don't know what was going through Richard's mind in his last days and I don't profess to I do know that what he did is not the answer and it sounds

like in the end sadly he found out it wasn't the answer as well but I also understand looking to his story and finding some inspiration not necessarily in what he did but the spirit behind why he did it of course I don't condone his actions in any means I think I've adequately said why they were dangerous and I could condemn it but for someone in Richard's state of mind that's not going to do a lot I can simply just say I get it and something that I think I can agree with as well as Richard's

family and anyone else who loves or hates his actions I think we can all say I hope he's at peace and hopefully you can say that you enjoyed this video because I sure did enjoy making it as depressing as it was and thank you so much for sticking around and I just want to say thank you for watching uh the Sky King is a story like I said I knew I knew about it before I started YouTube like a few days after it happened I remember the memes coming out everyone making jokes I remember I

one of the first things I saw was the image of the plane like in the sunset which a beautiful image by the way it was the plane in the sunset and uh the quote was something like he didn't go up there to die but he went up there to live or something like that and he's always been like this sort of cult figure that has uh I don't know he's always stuck with me it's always been something I've kind of wanted to make a video about for a while and I figured you know 2024 first

video of the Year why not right so yeah I hope in I hope in some small way I did the story Justice uh and there there was some more details I found or like uh like theories people had regarding the family and stuff and I really don't want to like the family's remark several times they don't want to do interviews they don't want to talk about it especially out of respect for Richard's uh widowed wife and uh I I I wouldn't feel right being like well maybe you know this happened or maybe he had this

problem or whatever um we we don't know why he did what he did but we can I I think that's also part of the reason so many people relate to him so much because if if say for example this isn't a theory but just say for example we found out that Richard had some kind of drug problem that led to it right um if that was it then it wouldn't be as relatable as just a guy who had something going on and decided to do something with his last moments I think the ambiguity of the

story is what lends to the Legends so much uh at least in the way I hear people talk about online I don't know I'm just I'm just rambling um but like I said hopefully you enjoyed this video uh and hopefully the story of Sky King interests you as it as it certainly has me for a while now um I that should do it I I don't think there's anything else to announce uh thank you all so much for how supportive you've been with the merchandise recently from the posters to the the hoodie drop and um

the the the YouTube Drop and everything you guys are fantastic there's more on the way I'm planning for some stuff tentatively around like Valentine's Day so hopefully you all will be ready for that I'm very excited for it um but yeah other than that check out the podcast oh the weird Bible podcast which I'm sure a lot of you all have been missing cuz it's been a while we recorded a live show live show in person show of that recently and that should be up soon so it will soon be three podcasts to stay on

the lookout for but uh I'll I'll link the red thread and creep cast and the weird Bible all down in the description you all should go check them out if you want to hear more of me ramble for some reason but sometimes I ramble with people cooler than me so that should that should be advertisement enough but if you stick around in this video as long as you have right now then I think you'll enjoy it but uh that's it uh I hope that you enjoyed the video more content soon on the way I'm going

to do I think another video unrelated to the crypted iceberg I want to get into the same cycle with the crypted iceberg I had during the conspiracy theory Iceberg where every third video was an iceberg but we'll see how that goes or is a part of the iceberg you know what I mean um but anyway I believe that should do it for now more content on the way and thank you all so much for watching um yeah no that's it we're done so yeah thank you for watching I hope that you enjoyed and I will

see you in the next one bye that's was a week by but there we go