'Fake Pilot' Arrested With 101 Passengers On Board

AMSTERDAM — A pilot suspected of flying with a forged license for more than a decade was arrested in the Netherlands shortly before he was scheduled to depart on a flight carrying 101 passengers, police said Wednesday.

National police said the man, identified a 41-year-old Swede who lives in Milan, was arrested in the cockpit of a Boeing 737 scheduled to fly from Amsterdam to Ankara, Turkey.

Lawyer Benno Friedberg of Turkish airline Corendon said the company had cooperated with police and had a reserve pilot prepared to take over the flight.

According to a police statement, the man had once had a commercial pilot license, but it had expired and it never qualified him for passenger flights.

"The pilot said he was relieved that his misdeeds had come to light, and he pulled off his stripes at the time of his arrest," the statement said.

"He claimed to have worked for various companies in Belgium, Britain and Italy" over 13 years, logging more than 10,000 flight hours.

Friedberg said the man had worked for Corendon for two years.

Comments

[Amalek]

07:06 AM on 03/05/2010

In the days before this country went nuts about airline security, I used to carry a pair of wings they handed out to kids on United Airlines. I would pin them to my blue blazer and sit in the airport bar, striking up conversation with my seatmate while pouring down the scotch. "So where are you headed" "Cleveland", she replies. "Me to" I exclaim, "On United"? Yes, she says. "Great - I am your Captain". It never failed to floor them.

[Hollywooddeed]

08:06 AM on 03/06/2010

Sadly, there's no room for fun like that anymore. Today you'd probably be arrested.

[Paladin2]

06:29 PM on 03/08/2010

Someone sent me this from the days when life in the U.S. was fun and freer that you'd enjoy. I was but a baby when Dean Martin had his show and Foster Brooks is a name unfamiliar to me but watch this and if you don't laugh at it then your political correctness has sucked out your soul. If I thought that was the case I'd not take the time to try to remember along with you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8L-ZZSc8JU

[Flying Dutchman]

05:06 AM on 03/05/2010

Can you guys remember that mid 90's show "The Pretender"?
This story made me think of that show.

BTW; Flying is not that hard, getting the plane on the ground (in one piece) is a lot harder. If this guy managed to do this (in a 737), he can fly... Why he never extended his license is a mystery, why risk all this embarrassment? Maybe he was caught drinking or something, there are some sins in aviation which get you ousted.

[w00pecker5]

04:40 AM on 03/05/2010

Why his pilot license was not renewed?

[natturnerx]

12:09 AM on 03/05/2010

well, what if i scammed my way into a hospital job as a doctor even though i had never gone to med school? then after several years of successful practice they found out i had no credentials. might as well give me credit for ojt & let me keep on doctoring.

[MYKLTOO]

03:29 AM on 03/05/2010

Unfortunately, that has been done...

[BannedInBoston]

11:24 PM on 03/04/2010

Wasn't there a Leonardo DiCaprio movie like this a while back?

[GerryS]

12:54 AM on 03/05/2010

yup, and @ 10k hours, he should have simply done the paperwork and collected the $$$--------------

[LawrenceNC]

10:21 PM on 03/04/2010

With 10,000 cockpit hours, why didn't he just do the paperwork, take the tests and flight physicals and get a license. He obviously knows how to pilot a 737.

[Harvee Wallbanger]

10:06 PM on 03/04/2010

When asked if he was a pilot, he replied, "No, but I spent the night at a Holiday Inn Express."

But seriously, why didn't the guy just update his creds?

[ObamAtomic]

09:04 PM on 03/04/2010

He is a pilot with an expired license,where is the falseness?

[OpposingViewpoint]

09:35 PM on 03/04/2010

Fake commercial pilot. His license never qualified him to pilot an aircraft carrying passengers.

[ObamAtomic]

10:20 PM on 03/04/2010

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fake

He know to fly a plane,once he had a commercial license,fake is determined to be non existent.

My opinion,we can agree to disagree.Fake is fake!
He wasn't a fake pilot,his license expired.

[BannedInBoston]

11:26 PM on 03/04/2010

Agree with OA. He's not a fake PILOT. He just has a fake license (for the type of piloting he was doing). Huffpost headline-writer strikes again!

[phredralf]

08:35 PM on 03/04/2010

Real pilot, expired license. I love headline writers, it's all about the clicks at the end of the day.

[proggirl]

08:07 PM on 03/04/2010

There's a fascinating docudrama from the early 90s called Chameleon Street, about a man who successfully impersonated a reporter and a surgeon (performing over 30 successful hysterectomies!) before he got caught while functioning as an attorney. His next "job" was supposedly going to be as an airline pilot.

[Paladin2]

07:17 PM on 03/08/2010

You can probably google it up but I think there was a movie or book written about a real life faker that managed all kinds of frauds at a bunch of 'professions'. 'Talking the talk' is often enough to fool most people. "I'm the President" is a really good example. Only the results are brutally tragic. If we jailed anyone that broke the oath they all take we'd have a President a week. And nobody holds them to that solemn oath anymore, so why all this wailing about a pilot with bad paperwork. You don't have to take an oath to get a pilots certificate.

[inthedesert]

07:37 PM on 03/04/2010

Just one MORE reason not to fly......LOL.

[uncwilli]

06:19 PM on 03/04/2010

FWIW, the lede photo is of a Boeing 787, which is in test-flight status, not in revenue service. Why do news sources use photos that have nothing to do with the story?

[RTIII]

06:04 PM on 03/05/2010

1) They don't know any better and;
2) they think WE don't know any better either.
.

[MrGovtCheese]

04:53 PM on 03/04/2010

"The pilot said he was relieved that his misdeeds had come to light, and he pulled off his stripes at the time of his arrest," ...

What does that mean, pulled off his stripes? His wings or the stripes on his sleeves.

[Halsey]

04:32 PM on 03/04/2010

sad thing...maybe he was an excellent pilot... better than having your kid guide in planes as an air traffic controller (please tell me the dad in THAT one going to big time prison...)...

[amdezurik]

05:27 PM on 03/04/2010

try a fact or two in the future

[Try the truth]

05:30 PM on 03/04/2010

The story of the kid guiding planes for take off and landing is on THIS SITE! Maybe you should check before you ask others for facts.

[CessnaDriver]

05:43 PM on 03/04/2010

Other than a breach in protocol, the kid-in-the-tower thing is a piffle. The kid was just talking on the radio, he wasn't directing traffic, and there was never any real danger.

It's not like there was an airshow going on or anything.

[samknox]

07:50 PM on 03/04/2010

That's exactly right, and yet every headline I've seen is some version of "Child Directs Air Traffic", as if he was sitting in front of a radar screen lining-up planes to land.

[RACVC]

04:23 PM on 03/04/2010

Don't all licensed professionals need to update their licenses yearly?
How did the aviation licensing board miss this for 13 years?

[Kandahar]

05:18 PM on 03/04/2010

No..A Pilots license is for lifetime until the FAA decides to void it.

However, a Pilot is required to maintain currency. He has to meet certain training criteria and other criteria depending on the level. An Airline Pilot has the most demanding currency requirment in addition to a first class medical certificate to actually fly as Pilot in Command of an Airliner.

[CessnaDriver]

05:49 PM on 03/04/2010

It's not really a "License" but a "Pilot's Certificate" and they don't bother revoking it when you die. Charles Lindbergh and Orville Wright still have certificates on file at the FAA.

To fly you have to have an appropriate certificate, medical, and flight reviews.

Oddly, I was asked for two forms of ID by the TSA and they wouldn't take my Pilot's Certificate as a valid form of ID even though it matched my driver's license and had my SSN on it. Weird.

[Kandahar]

05:23 PM on 03/04/2010

What is interesting is his airline company has not checked his papers.. Now, that's were the real trouble is. Because Pilot information is public information. Anyone can check for a pilots credential It's out there on the FAA data base/Internet.

[CessnaDriver]

05:46 PM on 03/04/2010

It might depend on where the Pilot's Certificate was issued. The problem here is that the guy worked for several airlines, which means that his credentials should have been checked each time, but they weren't.

The article doesn't say how he was caught....anyone have information on that?