PORTLAND, Ore. -- A man accused of hijacking a Horizon Air commuter plane apparently sneaked aboard the craft as a stowaway, airline officials said.
'The only thing we know is that he did gain access through some other way than through the normal boarding procedure,' Steve Fortenberry, Horizon's director of flight operations, said Tuesday.
Douglas Thomas, 29, Stillwater, Okla., was arrested early Saturday on a charge of air piracy at Hillsboro Airport, about 3 hours after Flight 2318 was hijacked as the plane left Eugene on its Medford to Portland run.
The passengers and crew escaped unharmed, and Thomas surrendered peacefully to authorities.
Fortenberry said the hijacker did not enter the Horizon gate in Eugene and was not processed by a ticket agent. The plane arrived in Eugene with 10 passengers, and only one passenger, a man, boarded the craft legally in Eugene, he said.
Both the pilot and co-pilot of the 19-passenger plane saw a man board in Eugene, but both crew members later learned they saw different people. One was the ticketed passenger, Fortenberry said.
'The man probably (entered the flight field) from another area, and the ramp (to the plane) was dark,' Fortenberry said. 'The man probably snuck up when nobody was looking and came aboard. Basically, he was a stowaway.'
Fortenberry said Horizon intends to improve the lighting on the ramp and already has changed boarding procedures.
'We now make a physical head count on board and compare that with the tickets to make sure we have the correct number of people,' he said.
Chris Hunt, a Eugene Aircraft line service worker, said he found two pieces of luggage belonging to Thomas on the wings of a private airplane parked outside the flight service. Eugene Aircraft, which services private planes, is about 200 yards from the main terminal at Mahlon Sweet Airport.
A Eugene newspaper, The Register Guard, reported Wednesday that Thomas attended Lane Community College in Eugene in 1976 while he was recovery from a long-time drug addiction.
Thomas told the newspaper during a 1976 interview while he was playing in the 59th Western Junior Golf Championships at Eugene Country Club that he began smoking marijuana at age 13.
During the interview, Thomas said he progressed to dropping acid at age 14 and eventually shooting speed.
'I have so deep an appreciation of life now because it's been handed back, literally, to me,' he said of his recovery. 'Looking back on it now, it's had to believe I've been in the bottom of what life can be.'
'He seemed like a real nice kid,' said Steve Thorwald, Thomas's roommate while he lived in Eugene. 'He was real intelligent. He went to LCC and I believe worked at Radio Shack.'
'He was just out of drug therapy. He was just as nervous as a cut cat,' Thorwald said. 'He drank Pepsis, smoked cigarettes and played golf. There was never any indication towards violence at all.'
'The kid was outstanding at the time,' he said. 'He had unlimited potential had he stayed away from the booze and the drugs.'
Thorwald said Thomas unexpectedly left Eugene about a month after he arrived.
