Driver Crashes Onto Portland Airport, Heads Under Plane To Evade Police

A 24 year old man crashed his car through a perimeter gate at the Portland airport on Sunday. His wife and two children were in the vehicle with him.

An airport employee flagged them down – literally, waiving a white cloth as a flag – and police responded to the scene. The driver explained that they were being “chased by several trucks and they had crashed through the airport fence to escape.”

The trucks must have been invisible and followed the man onto the taxiway, because right in front of the officers the driver got back into his car – grabbing one of his kids, and putting them on his lap – and sped off. According to the police report, the “[t]wo officers jumped out of the way to avoid being run over.” The man drove right under the wing of a taxiing flight.

The pilot of a commercial airliner was forced to stop on the taxiway at Portland International Airport (PDX) on Sunday after a car drove underneath its wing. Port of Portland police chased the driver and arrested him at gunpoint.

…Investigators said the driver took off down an active taxiway, forcing a commercial airliner to stop as the sedan went under its wing. No one was hurt.

The driver eventually stopped near the airport’s new E gates, where he was taken into custody.

The man was charged with “criminal mischief, assaulting a police officer and attempting to elude.” He has no criminal record or “history of drug, alcohol or mental health issues.” The rest of the man’s family were released without charges.

Perhaps thinking this could have been some kind of X-File, airport police reviewed video footage looking for any other vehicles that might have been chasing the car onto the airport. None were found.

(HT: @ValueTravelerOz)

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Why was he arrested? Seems to be just another peaceful protest in Portland, Oregon. Defund the airport police, too!

  2. My God, there are a lot of lunatics in Oregon. What a shame, because it’s such a beautiful state – filled with such crazies.

  3. This is what happens when they stop taking Priority Pass at Capers PDX. In all seriousness, nobody got hurt and it wasnt as bad as it could’ve been had an aircraft been involved.

  4. @Yo mama: “Horrible grammar. ONTO the airport? High schoolers write more logically than you.”

    Just because you don’t prefer it doesn’t make it grammatically incorrect.

  5. @john go look up donkey of the day on you tube

    Oregon will never pass the weirdos that come out of Florida.

    Let’s not forget someone took bath salts and ate a living persons face off in Florida..

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