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Perhaps the ‘aviation geek’ was practicing short landing and takeoffs with his high tech ‘hobby’ setup at home. Remember the oversized planes that land at the wrong airports all the time. The passengers, their luggage and all non essential pieces are stripped off and the pilot takes off hot. One of those happened not too long ago with a 777 IIRC.

http://www.bellenews.com/2013/11/21/world/us-news/boeing-747-dreamlifter-cargo-lands-at-wrong-airport-in-kansas/

“aircraft normally needs a runway of 9,119 ft to get airborne at maximum weight; Jabara’s runway is only 6,102 ft long.

Brad Christopher of the Wichita Airport Authority told the Associated Press news agency the company that operates the aircraft had “assured us they’ve run all the engineering calculation and performance and the aircraft is very safe for a normal departure at its current weight and conditions here”.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swTjsxM7WW4

Maybe he was. And landing at the wrong airport still means landing at one with the weight capacity to handle the aircraft. Taking off is another thing, but no matter how much practice, the meteorological conditions at the time of takeoff can change. The book don't lie. If it gets hot that day, you'll need a runway stretcher to get off the ground. And that's for a plane and runway surface that weren't abused getting it in there in the first place.

You can takeoff with a load of 110,000# at sea level in about 45-4700 feet, at max gross, it takes 11,000 feet.

Landing the plane with almost no fuel and figure 260 souls onboard at 150#/apiece, with no cargo, you'd need between 42-4300 feet.

So you can land it on a shorter field than you can takeoff from with a useful load. Depending on the length of this phantom field, the target area for this plane to be a 'cruise missile' drops way down. Don't forget that passenger jets have to be high to get their forecast mileage. Low level ingress means even a smaller radius for an attack. If it does go high, it will need to spoof the air traffic monitoring that is now not just sitting on its collective ass.