SkyWest Airlines Pilot Kills Girlfriend Then Steals A Passenger Jet (CRJ200) At Utah Airport

http://AviationNewsToday.com - A pilot suspected of killing his girlfriend stole a passenger plane and crashed it at the airport terminal. The pilot then killed himself in the cockpit with the engines still running. Brian Hedglin who worked for SkyWest Airlines, scaled a security fence at the Saint George Airport and drove off with the SkyWest plane. The pilot clipped a wing on the terminal building and crashed into vehicles in a parking lot. The plane never left the ground. A police officer patrolling found a motorcycle with the engine running just outside the perimeter fence. As he searched the grounds for the owner, the officer came upon the idling plane and called SkyWest. The airline sent an employee to turn off the engine and inside the pilot was found with a gunshot wound to his head. The Air Line say the pilot has been an employee for the airline since 2005 but had been on administrative leave since police found the body of his ex-girlfriend in Colorado Springs. Authorities, who had made a welfare check at the request of her family, said she had been stabbed multiple times. Colorado Springs police said they had contacted SkyWest and asked it to deactivate the pilots access cards. The pilot was also a member of the Colorado National Guard, where he was a part time soldier who worked as a cook. He had no special military training and was never deployed. SkyWest officials said the 50 passenger CRJ200 plane the pilot stole was not in service at the time. The aircraft is made by Bombardier and is capable of flying up to 534 mph with a range of 1,700 miles. Normally it has a two-person flight crew and a single flight attendant.

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