Richard Russell was, by almost every account, an ordinary man.

Known as “Beebo” by friends and family, he was friendly, funny and often seen with his head buried in a book. He had worked an unremarkable airport job, loved travelling to Alaska to see his family and reportedly dreamed of one day becoming a military officer.

Then, on 10 August 2018, the 29-year-old climbed into an empty passenger aircraft at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

He started its engines.

He taxied towards a runway.

And, despite having no formal flight training, he took off.

What happened during the next hour would leave aviation experts, Russell’s family and millions of people on the internet struggling with the same question.

How did he do it?

Who Was Richard Russell?

Richard Russell was born in 1989 in Key West, Florida.

At the age of seven, he moved with his family to Wasilla, Alaska, where he spent much of his childhood.

Russell proved to be a talented athlete at Wasilla High School. He competed in football as well as track and field and graduated in 2008.

After high school, he moved to Coos Bay, Oregon, where he briefly attended a community college.

It was there that he met a woman named Hannah.

The couple married in 2011.

Shortly afterwards, they opened a bakery together, which they would operate for around three years.

Their personalities and approaches to the business were noticeably different.

Hannah had attended culinary school. She was detail-oriented and largely ran the operation.

Russell had no professional culinary training.

Instead, he was far more laid-back and enjoyed experimenting with unusual and sometimes wild recipes.

For three years, the couple worked together at the bakery.

But in 2015, they made a difficult decision.

With heavy hearts, they sold the business and moved to the Seattle area to be closer to Hannah’s family.

It was there that Russell’s life became connected to aviation.

Richard Russell’s Job at Sea-Tac Airport

After moving to Seattle, Russell found work as a ground service agent at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

He worked for Horizon Air.

It was not necessarily the career he wanted. But Russell and his wife needed money, and the airport job provided a steady income.

For around four years, he worked as a ramper.

His responsibilities included moving luggage in and out of aircraft.

Like many ground service workers, Russell reportedly became unhappy with the job.

He found the work boring.

He believed there was little opportunity for advancement.

And he felt he was severely underpaid.

However, the job offered one significant benefit: airline travel privileges.

Russell could fly to destinations around the world at little or no cost.

More importantly to him, he could regularly travel back to Alaska to visit his hometown and family.

Those trips were deeply important to him.

But after several years at the airport, Russell was given additional responsibilities that would put him much closer to the controls of an aircraft.

The Tow Team That Gave Russell Cockpit Access

Russell was assigned to a two-person aircraft tow team.

A tow team’s job was to move planes around the airport between flights.

The process involved two workers.

One person operated a tow vehicle, connected it to the aircraft and physically moved the plane.

The second person entered the cockpit.

That worker would turn on the aircraft and operate several basic systems to help safely move the plane where it needed to go.

Members of these tow teams were among the relatively small number of airport employees authorised to enter an aircraft cockpit alone.

Russell reportedly relished the opportunity.

Once inside the cockpit, he became fascinated by the switches, controls and instruments surrounding him.

Whenever he had the chance, Russell would ask pilots questions.

If a pilot was inside an aircraft with him, Russell might ask what a particular control did or how a certain system worked.

To those around him, it may have appeared to be simple curiosity.

But one incident attracted unwanted attention.

The Cockpit Incident That Left Russell Embarrassed

On one occasion, Russell began flipping switches in a cockpit that he was not supposed to touch.

Other pilots had previously explained some of those controls to him.

But the pilot responsible for this particular aircraft caught Russell operating the switches.

The pilot was unhappy.

Russell was reported.

Surprisingly, however, there were apparently no major repercussions.

For Russell, the incident was primarily embarrassing.

He continued working at the airport.

Those who knew him did not describe him as a dangerous man.

Friends and colleagues remembered someone with a great sense of humour.

He was extremely friendly.

He loved books.

Some co-workers said he had ambitions to become an officer in the military.

And when the people closest to Russell were later asked why he did what he did on 10 August 2018, none could provide a clear answer.

An Empty Horizon Air Plane Arrives at Sea-Tac

At approximately 1:35pm local time on 10 August 2018, a Horizon Air passenger aircraft arrived at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

The plane was not scheduled to fly again that day.

Airport workers moved it to the far northern section of the airport.

It was parked at an area known as Cargo 1.

For several hours, the aircraft remained there.

Then, at approximately 7:15pm, Richard Russell arrived.

He climbed inside the empty plane.

Russell made his way to the cockpit and began following the aircraft’s start-up procedure.

Soon, the plane was powered on.

Its propellers began turning.

Russell then climbed back out.

He entered a tow vehicle, connected it to the aircraft and turned the plane until its nose was pointing towards the airfield.

He moved the tow vehicle away.

Then he climbed back into the aircraft.

Russell closed the door behind him, returned to the cockpit and began taxiing.

He was heading towards a runway.

“What Are You Doing?”

Air traffic controllers quickly realised something was wrong.

For the next several minutes, they repeatedly attempted to contact Russell over the radio.

They wanted to know what he was doing.

The movement of the aircraft was unauthorised.

He should not have been heading towards the runway.

But Russell did not respond.

He continued taxiing.

Eventually, he reached the beginning of the runway.

Russell had no formal flight experience.

His apparent aviation knowledge came from video games, conversations with pilots and the time he had spent inside cockpits as part of his airport work.

Yet he pushed the aircraft to full throttle.

The passenger plane accelerated down the runway.

Then, incredibly, it left the ground.

Richard Russell had successfully taken off.

But the take-off was only the beginning.

The Impossible Flight of the “Sky King”

Russell remained in the air for roughly an hour.

During that time, he performed astonishing aerial manoeuvres.

He executed barrel rolls.

He performed dramatic loops and turns.

At one point, the passenger aircraft appeared to complete an extraordinary rolling manoeuvre before pulling out dangerously close to the ground.

These were manoeuvres in which even experienced pilots could risk stalling an aircraft and crashing.

Russell survived them.

Watching the aircraft move through the sky, it appeared as though the airport ground worker had been flying for years.

People across the Seattle area looked up in disbelief.

A passenger aircraft was performing extreme aerial stunts at relatively low altitude.

Witnesses pulled out their phones.

Videos were recorded and uploaded to social media.

In real time, people across the internet became aware of the unidentified man flying the aircraft.

Residents went outside and watched the plane moving across the sky.

But the most extraordinary part of Russell’s flight was not necessarily the aerial manoeuvres.

It was his voice.

Richard Russell’s Chillingly Calm Conversation With Air Traffic Control

Throughout much of the flight, Russell spoke with an air traffic controller.

The controller remained remarkably calm and professional.

Again and again, he attempted to convince Russell to land.

He suggested possible airfields.

He explained where Russell could go.

At one point, the possibility of putting the aircraft down in Puget Sound was discussed.

Russell, however, appeared to laugh off the suggestions.

“I just kind of want to do a couple manoeuvres to see what it can do before I put her down,” he said.

The controller attempted to direct Russell towards a runway.

Russell’s response highlighted his lack of formal aviation knowledge.

“Man, I’m a ground service agent,” he said. “I don’t know what that is.”

The controller tried to explain that a runway was located off Russell’s right side, approximately a mile away.

Russell acknowledged it.

But then he admitted something disturbing.

“I wouldn’t know how to land it,” he said.

“I wasn’t really planning on landing it.”

Jokes, Beautiful Scenery and a Growing Sense of Remorse

As the aircraft continued through the sky, the controller repeatedly tried to persuade Russell to bring the flight to a safe end.

Russell often ignored those efforts.

Instead, he cracked jokes.

He talked about the scenery.

From the cockpit, he could see the landscape stretching out beneath him.

He spoke about how beautiful everything looked.

The strange calmness of his voice contrasted sharply with the extraordinary emergency unfolding around him.

Then Russell’s tone began to change.

He became remorseful.

He told the controller that he hoped he had not ruined his day.

Russell also expressed concern about the people he believed he would inevitably hurt.

Then he spoke about his family and friends.

“I got a lot of people that care about me,” Russell said.

He knew they would be disappointed when they discovered what he had done.

“I would like to apologise to each and every one of them,” he said.

Then came perhaps the most widely remembered words of the entire flight.

“Just a broken guy,” Russell said.

“Got a few screws loose, I guess. Never really knew it until now.”

“I’m Just Going to Nose Down and Call It a Night”

Towards the end of the flight, Russell told the controller he wanted to attempt another barrel roll.

“I think I’m gonna try to do a barrel roll,” he said.

If the manoeuvre went well, Russell explained what he intended to do next.

“I’m just going to nose down and call it a night.”

The controller continued trying to persuade him to land.

There was still a possibility, he suggested, that Russell could bring the aircraft down.

But Russell was no longer listening.

At approximately 8:45pm, witnesses saw the nose of the aircraft pointing towards the ground.

One minute later, at 8:46pm, the plane crashed into a small island off the coast of Seattle.

Russell was the only person killed.

No passengers had been aboard the aircraft.

How Did Richard Russell Learn to Fly?

In the aftermath of the crash, one question dominated discussions about Richard Russell.

How had a ground service agent with no formal pilot training successfully taken off in a passenger aircraft and performed complex aerial manoeuvres?

The complete answer remains uncertain.

Some people believe Russell may have planned the flight for a considerable amount of time.

They point to his fascination with cockpit controls.

During his time on the tow team, Russell regularly asked pilots to explain switches, toggles and aircraft systems.

Perhaps, the theory suggests, Russell was not simply curious.

Perhaps he was quietly learning.

The earlier incident in which a pilot caught him operating cockpit switches also took on a more disturbing significance after the crash.

However, there is no simple explanation for the level of control Russell demonstrated in the air.

Another theory is that video games or flight simulation experience helped him understand basic flying principles and aerial manoeuvres.

Russell himself referenced video games during the incident.

But even if he learned parts of flying by asking pilots questions, observing cockpit controls and playing video games, what happened on 10 August 2018 was extraordinary.

Knowing how something works in theory is not the same as doing it in reality.

Russell managed to start the aircraft.

He moved it into position.

He taxied to a runway.

He accelerated.

He successfully took off.

Then he remained airborne for around an hour while performing dangerous manoeuvres that could have caused the aircraft to stall and crash at almost any moment.

The odds of an untrained person successfully doing everything Russell did appeared incredibly small.

Why the Internet Called Richard Russell the “Sky King”

As footage of the flight spread online, Richard Russell was given a new nickname.

The internet began calling him the “Sky King”.

The name was intended to reflect the almost unbelievable nature of his flight.

A man who officially worked on the ground had somehow taken control of a passenger aircraft and flown it through the Seattle sky.

But behind the spectacular videos and the mythology that developed online was a far darker story.

Russell repeatedly acknowledged that people cared about him.

He apologised for disappointing them.

He calmly spoke about the beauty of the landscape beneath him while rejecting repeated opportunities to attempt a landing.

And, during one of the most haunting moments of his conversation with air traffic control, he appeared to admit that even he did not fully understand what had led him there.

Years after the 2018 Horizon Air incident, the extraordinary mechanics of Richard Russell’s flight continue to fascinate people.

How did a man with no formal pilot training take off and perform such dangerous manoeuvres?

Had he secretly prepared for the flight?

Or had years of curiosity, video games and brief exposure to aircraft controls somehow given him just enough knowledge?

There is no definitive answer.

And perhaps that uncertainty is the reason the story of Richard Russell — the airport worker the internet would call the “Sky King” — continues to be remembered.