Pilot sacked after Seattle flyby

In a stunt most of us have only seen in the Tom Cruise film Top Gun, a Cathay Pacific pilot took it upon himself to play a bit of a prank by buzzing the tower at Paine Field north of Seattle while taking delivery of a new Boeing 777-300ER jet.

Cathay Pacific, the Hong Kong-based airline that has won so many awards and received so much acclaim in the past, declined to identify the pilot who performed the stunt without permission, and did not elaborate further than to say that the airline’s chairman Christopher Pratt was on the plane in question.

A statement from the airline said that another pilot onboard received disciplinary action, but it was only the one pilot who lost his job over the unauthorized flyby. Images of the stunt have been posed on popular internet sites like YouTube, and Mike Fergus, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration said nothing more than that the incident was under investigation.

www.cathaypacific.com