They may have cost him his life, but an airline employee’s acrobatics in an empty propeller plane he stole in Seattle drew words of wonder from the head of the company where he’d worked.

“There were some maneuvers that were done that were incredible maneuvers with the aircraft,” Gary Beck, CEO of Horizon Air, said of the flight that ended with a crash onto a small island. “To our knowledge, he didn’t have a pilot’s license.”

New details from the Friday night incident emerged in a Saturday press conference.

The 29-year-old ground service agent, whose name was not released, hijacked a 76-seat Q400 aircraft belonging to Alaska Airlines’ regional carrier Horizon around 7:30 p.m. Pacific time, officials said.

The Sumner, Wash., man, whom cops identified as Richard Russell, managed several barrel rolls and loop-the-loops before plummeting to his death.

He crashed the plane in a wooded area of Ketron Island, 25 miles south of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

“I think I’m gonna try to do a barrel roll, and if that goes good, I’m just gonna nose down and call it a night,” the man joked with a calm air traffic control agent in a publicly released recording of the conversation. “I’ve played video games before, so I know what I’m doing a little bit.”

Beck marvelled at the amateur piloting.

“Commercial aircrafts are complex machines. They’re not as easy to fly as, say, a Cessna 150, so I don’t know how he achieved the experience he did,” the CEO said. A Cessna 150 is a two-seat civilian aircraft.

The FBI is investigating the bizarre incident in conjunction with the National Transportation Safety Board and local law enforcement.

“This is going to take a little bit of time,” said Jay Tabb, special agent in charge of the bureau’s Seattle Division. He said 30 to 40 investigators were interviewing the pilot’s co-workers and family members.

Authorities said he’d been an employee of Horizon since 2015 and “was fully credentialed and had access to” the cargo area where the Q400 was kept.

He used a tractor to place the plane on a runway for takeoff, officials said.

“No security violations were committed,” said Alaska Airlines CEO Brad Tilden.

While in the air, Russell joked for nearly 20 minutes with the air traffic control agent, but admitted he had “a few screws loose” and called himself “just a broken guy.”

“I’ve got a lot of people that care about me. It’s going to disappoint them to hear that I did this,” Russell said. “I would like to apologize to each and every one of them.”

Two F-15 fighters were scrambled, about 75 flights were delayed and five fights were cancelled, authorities said.

They would not comment on Russell’s mental health.