2018 Horizon Air Bombardier Q400 incident
Aircraft crash in United States
On August 10, 2018, a Bombardier Q400 operated by Horizon Air was stolen from Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (Sea–Tac) by 28-year-old Richard Russell, 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 successfully executed a loop before purposely crashing the aircraft on the sparsely populated Ketron Island in Puget Sound with the intent to die by suicide. There were no collateral human injuries; Russell was the sole fatality.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “2018 Horizon Air Bombardier Q400 incident” as aircraft crash in United States. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as aircraft crash in United States. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 26, 2026. The first chronological checks are 2018.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
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Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “2018 Horizon Air Bombardier Q400 incident”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow 2018 Horizon Air Bombardier Q400 incident primary sources, 2018 Horizon Air Bombardier Q400 incident archive and Horizon research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “2018 Horizon Air Bombardier Q400 incident” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.