PAYSON — In the early hours of Monday morning, Duane Youd drove to Spanish Fork-Springville Airport in his white pickup, entered his employer’s hanger and took off in a twin-engine Cessna 525.

The plane crashed moments after taking off and Payson police say they believe it was no accident. Officials said it appeared Youd deliberately tried to crash into the home he shared with his wife and her 24-year-old son. Both his wife and stepson were uninjured in the attempt; Youd died on impact.

The chain of events all happened just hours after police say Youd bailed out of the Utah County Jail following a domestic incident Sunday night.

The incident caused shockwaves across the community, the state, and even caught national attention. It also came just days after another bizarre flight incident in which a ground-service agent commandeered a vacant turboprop plane at the Sea-Tac International Airport in Seattle and crashed it into an island in the Puget Sound. He also died.

Airport security

Both incidents raise questions about access to planes at large and small airports. Could anyone take off in a plane? The common element in both cases is each had clearance access to the planes they had flown and hadn't show any signs that they would crash a plane. They weren’t random people thwarting a security system.

In Youd’s case, he was a trusted pilot at Spanish Fork-Springville Airport, who people there called “Rhedd.” While authorities and Youd’s family members and friends will likely never know what was going through Youd’s mind during the final hours of his life, Steven Wilson, the airport's fixed-base operator, said it’s unlikely anyone at the airport could have stopped Youd from taking off Monday morning.

He was a corporate pilot for VanCon, Inc. and Leon Van Sickle, the company’s president told the Associated Press on Tuesday that Youd had full access to the plane. That allowed him to head to the airport and take the plane out without suspicion.

On top of that, Wilson said it wasn’t totally uncommon for Youd to fly at night and there were also no signs that Youd had gone to the airport with malicious intent. It’s what makes the case perplexing for officials trying to prevent what happened from ever happening again.

“I can’t see any changes (here) because this plane was locked up in a hanger,” Wilson said. “Rhedd had access to the hanger whenever he wanted because he was the corporate pilot for that company. All the bigger jets here on the field are locked up in hangers and the majority of people around here have security cameras in there that trigger an alarm.”

The airfield doesn’t have a control tower and pilots often communicate via radio, Wilson said. It’s unknown if Youd said anything when he took off.

Related story:

Plane stolen by employee crashes near Seattle

An airline employee stole an empty Horizon Air turboprop plane, took off from Sea-Tac International Airport and was chased by military jets before crashing into a small island in the Puget Sound on Friday night, officials said.

With the Seattle incident, there are 12,600 people with access to aircraft at the much larger Sea-Tac International Airport, according to a report by the Seattle Times on Tuesday.

“All security protocols were handled appropriately here at the airport,” Port of Seattle Commissioner Courtney Gregoire told the Seattle Times, later adding the agency hoped to learn from what happened.

Both Wilson and Gregoire noted the odds of something like what happened on Friday and Monday were super rare. Wilson described Monday’s incident as something beyond what you might see in a movie and Gregoire described Friday’s incident as an “aberration.”

KSL.com reached out to a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration for comment on either case and to see if mental health was checked regularly as a part of airport security protocols. The spokeswoman referred KSL.com to a statement TSA administrator David Pekoske tweeted Monday in regards to Friday’s incident.

“This is an unfortunate incident, and presents a time for all parties, government and industry, to put best ideas forward to identify possible aviation vulnerabilities and address them,” Pekoske wrote in the statement. “As the investigation progresses, we’ll review the facts and commit to identify and address any possible vulnerabilities, should that be appropriate.”

Read more:

AP NewsBreak: Pilot who crashed his own home had hangar code

A man who died when he flew a plane into his own house after he had been arrested for assaulting his wife had full access to his employer's plane because he had earned the firm's trust, the president of the Utah company said Tuesday.

Looking back during the days after Monday's incident, Wilson said he wishes he had known Youd was struggling with something in his personal life. He said he had no idea Youd was arrested Sunday until after the crash.

“It’s just very, very odd. Something else broke inside of him that we’ll never understand," Wilson said. "I know others on the field— if we had known what was going on in his life, we would’ve tried to get involved with him and see what we could do to help him.”

How a pilot gets a license and how one gets revoked

Youd was a licensed commercial pilot with plenty of experience in the air, but what kind of screening is required to become a pilot? The Federal Aviation Administration offers licenses for several different flying machines.

ATP Flight School details the process for a professional pilot as this:

• FAA medical certificate: Pilot candidates must be cleared by an FAA-designated aeromedical examiner. According to the FAA, there are mental health requirements for even the lowest-level aircraft pilot.
• FAA student pilot certificate: This isn't a necessity to begin flying lessons, but is needed to fly solo before a license is given.
• Start flight training sessions: These are lessons to prepare for the Pilot Knowledge Test.
• Pass private Pilot Knowledge Test: Student pilots must pass a computer-best private Pilot Knowledge Test after an endorsement from a flight instructor.
• Pass private Pilot Practical Exam: Students must pass an oral and flight exam before they become a pilot.

However, there are other reasons the FAA could suspend or revoke a pilot's license. Fraudulent statements, flying on a suspended license, flight operations involving drugs or alcohol beyond regulated limits, three DUI convictions in three years, possession of illegal drugs and altered medical certificates are other ways a pilot could lose their license, according to an article for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.

Per Youd's court records, there were no previous cases that would have sparked him to lose his license.

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