Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - This Psycho Pilot Tries To Crash His Own Plane - The Auburn Calloway Story

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

Auburn Calloway, a disgruntled FedEx flight engineer facing imminent dismissal over falsified flight hours, attempted a shocking act of disguising a hijacking as an accident. Smuggling hammers, a speargun, and a guitar case aboard as a deadhead passenger, Calloway planned to murder the cockpit crew mid-flight, crash the DC‑10, and ensure his family cashed in on his life insurance.

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Now the guy's name is Auburn, and Auburn is 42, living in Tennessee, and Bro has a big problem. He's a flight engineer working for FedEx, and he's pretty sure FedEx is about to fire him. He had apparently lied to them about his credentials, and they just found out about it, and so he's like, oh, shit, they're about to fire me! And to make it worse, he's also having money problems, and he really wants to take care of his kids financially, who now live with his ex-wife,

and he can't take care of his kids or his money problems if FedEx fires him. So what's Auburn gonna do? Well, one day, in 1994, he comes up with a crazy solution to fix all this. He's going to hijack a FedEx cargo plane from work. Then he's going to intentionally crash it

into the ground with himself inside, making it look like an accident. And sure, he'll die, but it'll look like he died in a work-related plane crash. and therefore his kids will be able to collect on a $2.5 million life insurance policy that he has set up. And yeah, it's an insane plan, but he's thinking it just might work. So he shows up to work one day at FedEx ready to give this a shot,

and he gets on a flight with a few other guys, and the plane takes off, and soon they're in the air cruising along like everything is normal, and no one has any idea what he's about to do. Now, this is a cargo plane, hauling cargo. or whatever. So it only has three other people on board. So there's four people on this plane total. And in order for Auburn to take over the cockpit and crash this thing, he needs to get rid of these other three people, which means he's going to murder them. So he leaves the cockpit and he goes back to the galley area and he gets the baggage that he brought with him, which is just a

guitar case. But inside this guitar case, he brought a couple of hammers and a whole ass spear gun for some reason. So he grabs just the hammers and he goes back to the cockpit where the other three crew members are and these guys, they're not looking at him, they're busy chatting with each other and they're flying the plane. And that is when Auburn raises up one of those hammers and suddenly, pow, pow, he hits the flight engineer in the back of the head. Then immediately, boom, he hits one of the pilots. Then boom, he hits the other pilot. Now at this point, all three crew members, they're wounded pretty badly. And they're a bit out of because they just got hit so hard, but they're still alive.

So Auburn's like, damn it, that didn't work. So he goes back to the galley area, back to his guitar case, and he gets that spear gun out. Then he heads back to the cockpit, and he points it at them. And he's like, get back in your seat or I'll shoot you with this. Now remember, they're flying however many thousands of feet in the air, and this guy is their coworker. Like, I don't think they know him that well, but they all work for FedEx. Now imagine if you went to work one day at the strip club or I don't know wherever you work

Imagine if you went to work and you're doing your job or whatever and suddenly from behind one of your co-workers is like Bam and hits you upside the head with a hammer now imagine that is going on while you're supposed to be flying a plane That shit is scary anyway so he's pointing his spear gun at them telling them to stay seated and this is when the flight engineer is like fuck all this. And so bam, he lunges at Auburn and he grabs the spear gun and he's trying to wrestle it away from him, but he can't quite get it. Then boom, one of the pilots jumps in and now they're both fighting him trying to pull this weapon from his hands and this fight spills out into the galley area. And so the pilot flying, he's still trying to keep the plane in the air while the others fight. And he turns the whole thing back toward the airport that they took off from.

And he can hear the other guys fighting behind him in the galley area, but he can't see what's going on, not from where he's sitting. And he feels like he's got to do something to help. And this is where things get really crazy. Because the pilot, he starts thinking, if I do a barrel roll and flip the plane upside down, this will flip everyone upside down, and Auburn will get tossed around,

and this will knock the weapons out of his hands. And so, bam, he rolls this big-ass airplane, flipping it almost completely upside down, and he holds it there. And the three guys in the back, they all fall from the floor to the ceiling. And they're still fighting, except they're now fighting on the ceiling. However, this maneuver didn't disarm Auburn at all,

because he still got that spear gun. And so the other guys, they're still back there, trying to pull it away from him. But apparently, Auburn is a trained martial arts expert, while these other guys are wounded from being hit in the head with a hammer. So even though it's two on one, he's still kind of kicking their ass. Here's the other thing, though. These cargo planes aren't designed to do like loop-de-loops and fancy maneuvers and whatnot.

They're designed to haul cargo. So this plane suddenly goes into a nose dive, and it's heading straight down, right toward the ground at top speed. In fact, the speedometer is topping out at 540 miles an hour. And so the three guys in the back, they're all getting tossed around, but somehow they're still wrestling, fighting, and beating each other up. And I'm sure the pilot and the flight engineer are still. scared out of their minds because Auburn is just not giving up. Remember, he had already planned on dying today. So he doesn't care if he gets hurt. He doesn't care if the plane crashes. In fact, he wants it to crash. He's probably happy the plane is in a nosedive because at the end of the

day, he'll do whatever he can to die at work so that he can get his kids that life insurance money. And at this point, Auburn grabs one of his hammers and boom, he hits one of the pilots in the head with it again. And so it looks like he's about to win this fight. Until. Here's the thing about the pilot who's up front flying the plane. He's actually very good. He's a very experienced Navy pilot.

So he uses his skills and he slowly stabilizes the plane. And for the first time, this pilot finally has time to radio in the emergency. He also starts to roll the plane left and right. to keep tossing Auburn around. And as he's being tossed around, Auburn starts to lose the fight. One of the pilots is able to wrestle the hammer from him, and boom, he hits him with it,

and boom, he hits him with it again. But Auburn is still gripping that spear gun, like he's about to shoot it. And suddenly, pow, the pilot hits him over the head as hard as he can. And this is enough for them to gain control of the fight and sort of pin him down. And they call out to the pilot flying the plane like, hey, turn on the autopilot and come help us.

But because he's been flying so crazy, like doing barrel rolls and nose dives and whatnot, I guess the plane is now unstable and the autopilot won't turn on. Regardless, he decides to just leave the cockpit anyway and come to the galley and help hold Auburn down while the other pilot goes up front to fly the plane. And eventually, that pilot is able to land the plane safely

as they continue to hold Auburn's crazy ass down until police can get. there. And so, bam, police arrest him. And I don't have a mugshot, but here's a picture of him way back when he was in the military. And ultimately, Auburn gets sentenced to life in prison for this. But the absolute craziest part of all this is that afterwards, a FedEx rep came out and said that it is unlikely that FedEx would have fired him for lying to them on his resume. So he did all of that and he probably wasn't even going to get fired. My gosh.