PHOENIX — Richard Russell claimed he learned to fly the De Havilland Dash 8 he stole from the Sea-Tac airport by playing flight simulator video games.
But is that really possible?
Flight simulator video games can be ultra-realistic, with all of the buttons and switches of real aircraft.
For about $70 you can download a flight simulator and an add-on that lets you fly the exact model of aircraft Russell stole.
"It's going to take you a little bit of time, but you can if you put the time into it," Embry Riddle Aeronautical University professor Ed Coleman said. "Now, will you be good at it in an actual airplane? Probably not."
Coleman said there's no substitute for hands-on training, but if he knew what the controls were, there may have been an easy way to figure out how to get airborne.
"There's a checklist for that," Coleman said. "Most companies actually leave the checklist in the airplane because it's specific to that model."
And in a few seconds, you can find a copy of that checklist online, showing you exactly which switches should be flipped and the positions of the controls to take off, cruise and land.
There are also YouTube videos showing people playing the same flight simulator games and walking people through the startup sequences.
So we can verify that it is possible, at least in theory, to learn to fly a plane without ever touching a real aircraft.
Still, Coleman said he was surprised Russell was able to fly as well as he did.
"That shows a level of skill or practice that not the average person would have," Coleman said.