Tower, This Is Ghost Rider, Requesting Permission for a Fly By

Not heeding the lessons learned by Goose and Maverick, a British pilot was recently fired for a low altitude "fly-by" at Everett's Paine Field.

British papers reported that the 55-year-old pilot, Ian Wilkinson, was fired after a video of his stunt made the rounds on You Tube. Last month during a "celebratory pre-flight" to mark the delivery of the new 777 for Cathay Pacific, Wilkinson flew the plane just 28 feet above the ground. His stunt apparently elicited silent terror from VIPs aboard the plane and cheers from an excited crowd of spectators, who apparently don't fear death by errant plane as much as we do. No word on whether the flight controller spilled his coffee, as was always the result of Maverick's fly-bys. As this is Seattle, we'll assume that he did.