Everybody's stealing planes. A guy in Seattle stole a commuter plane at the airport, flew some stunts he may have learned playing computer games and died when the plane crashed. They think he was suicidal. And in Utah, a man stole a plane and flew it into his house after he was arrested for domestic battery. He was killed, of course. His wife and child who were in the house survived.
This happened in the Soviet Union around 1950. A ground crew member deicing a plane climbed in and took off in it. This was a twin engine transport plane, the Soviet equivalent of a DC-3. There were apartments nearby for workers at the airfield. His wife had just left him. She moved into another apartment with her new boyfriend. Over the radio, he told the control tower he was going to crash the plane into the apartment building.
The apartments were evacuated. Jet fighters were called in to shoot down the plane but they had to get it away from buildings first. The man had been a pilot in World War Two and managed to out-maneuver the MiGs as they tried to herd him away from the buildings. The fighter pilots gave up and left and the man landed the plane and surrendered.
He was charged with theft of government property and over sixty counts of attempted murder. He was sentenced to death but execution was delayed at least in part because they wanted to know how he was able to outmaneuver the fighters. He wound up serving only three years in prison before being released.
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