A DRUNKEN car mechanic with only seven hours’ flying experience stole an aircraft and flew two teenage friends around New England before landing on a darkened airstrip with almost no fuel in the tank.
Philippe Patricio, 20, was arrested after a guard saw the single-engine Cessna landing at an airport in the New York suburbs before dawn on Wednesday and called police.
When the Brazilian immigrant and his two 16-year-old friends stepped out of the plane at Westchester County Airport, two empty beer bottles fell out.
The flight renewed concern about security at airports in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Thomas Belfiore, the Westchester County police commissioner, said: “At the end of the day, this is kids drinking and doing the equivalent of a stolen-car joyride with a plane.
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“But it also raises issues of national security. If it was not a couple of knucklehead kids, if it was someone with a dirty bomb or something, they could have done something horrible.”
Police said that the youths had been drinking at home in Bethel, Connecticut, and drove to Danbury Municipal Airport, where Mr Patricio had taken flying lessons.
The youths say that they slipped through a hole in the fence, but airport authorities found no hole large enough and suspect that Mr Patricio used a student pilot access code to open a gate.
The Cessna 172M belonged to Arrow Aviation, a flight school. Police say that Mr Patricio apparently started the plane with the key of another aircraft or some other instrument because Arrow Aviation still had the only two keys to the locked Cessna.
The youths apparently planned to fly over the city of New Haven, home to Yale University, about 35 miles away. Once aloft, however, they got lost and noticed that they were low on fuel.
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“When they got up, they got lost and it started to get interesting,” Mr Belfiore said. “Particularly the 16-year-olds got really concerned. They started to look for a place — any place — to land, and that is how they came across the airport.”
Mr Patricio landed on a taxiway at the Westchester airport, about 25 miles from the Danbury airstrip, even though the runway lights were off.
The aircraft was met by the police who had been summoned by the security guard.
Mr Patricio was handcuffed when he got out of the plane because he allegedly became belligerent. His blood alcohol level was found to be 0.15 per cent, nearly twice the legal limit for driving a car.
He was charged with reckless endangerment and criminal possession of stolen property and remanded in custody. He faces a maximum sentence of 22 years if convicted.
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His two under-age companions were set free. Police said that they had been led to believe that Mr Patricio had the right to use the plane. An investigation is continuing into whether the three should be charged with trespassing on airport property or other crimes.
Officials expressed amazement that the joyriders survived. Captain Arthur Sullo, of the Danbury police, said: “Airport officials feel that a person who is not quite experienced, who had to make a landing on the airstrip without lights, had to be very lucky. Especially given he was two-times drunk by automotive standards.”
Acquaintances told the Danbury News-Times that Mr Patricio emigrated to the United States from Brazil six years ago and was single, although he has a four-year-old child with an American woman he lived with until two weeks ago.
Mr Patricio, a trained mechanic, worked at a garage in Danbury until he was dismissed in February for absenteeism. He had also worked at the nearby Waterbury-Oxford Airport. He was obsessed by flying and dreamt of buying his own plane.
A friend said: “For those who knew Philippe superficially, this is shocking. He is a kind young man with a huge heart — someone who would put his life on the line for others.
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“But his personal life was a wreck. For someone who knew him well like me, it is not a surprise that he did something like this. He has been arrested twice for driving while drunk and lost his licence because of it.”