I bought a 56 172 to take my primary training in. During the first flight with my instructor we flew the plane from my airport, KLBX south of Houston, the short distance to his hanger at KAXH. That eliminated the issue of us getting together to fly until he could sign me off to fly solo from LBX to AXH.
A few weeks later I got a call from our airport manager telling me that the sheriff needed to see me at my hanger right away. When I drove into the airport I saw several sheriff cars and people standing outside a lot of the hangers. It turned out that someone had broken into a lot of the hangers, had pulled out and moved several planes, and then had stolen a 172 from the hanger next to mine. That plane was found crashed into the power lines a mile or so south of the airport.
No one was found in the wrecked plane and the sheriff office was trying to figure out what happened. They escorted each hanger owner into their hanger to see if anything was missing and then asked if we knew anything about the incident.
They had a hard time understanding why I had a hanger for a plane that I owned, but had my plane at another airport. Finally, after talking to my instructor and verifying my story, they let me close the door on my hanger and go home.
About 30 minutes after I got home the airport manager called me and said the FBI had showed up and I had to go back. There are a lot of chemical plants about 10 miles south of LBX and the FBI thought a terrorist had stolen the plane with the intention of crashing it into one of the plants.
The FBI had mobilized a large crew, Including several forensic teams, and were really ticked that the sheriff had let us go into the hangers and ‘contaminate the crime scene’. They really didn’t like the story on my plane.
They took me to one of the conference rooms to talk about it and had me go through the story several times. They asked me two different times if I knew ‘Lying to an FBI agent was a federal offense’. We called my instructor again and eventually, after sending an agent to AXH to verify that my plane was really there, they let me go.
There was a V-tailed Bo parked outside of his hanger a short distance from mine. It wasn’t damaged and looked good when the sheriff had let us go. It didn’t look nearly as good with fingerprint powder all over the outside. I heard the panel and interior looked much worse. After all the effort it took to get the black powder off the outside of my hanger door I don’t know how the Bo owner got the inside of his plane cleaned up.
In the end, a guy turned himself into the sheriff. He said he had seen the news coverage including statements by the FBI and DHS about the investigation they were doing with references to possible terrorism. He said he’d been arrested by the sheriff several times before so he wanted the sheriff’s to arrest him instead of the FBI. It turned out that he got drunk, had always wanted to fly a plane, and talked a friend into dropping him off at the airport with a pair of bolt cutters.
He said he started with the first hanger he came to and went down the line checking planes to see if they had the keys inside. The first he found with keys was the Bo. He pulled it out, read the manual that he found in the glove box, figured out how to start it, and taxied out to the runway. At some point he decided it was too complicated so he taxied it back the the hanger he took it from and went to look for a plane that would be easier to fly.
He went down the line of hangers and found a 172 with the keys in it at the next hanger he opened after mine. He said that based on what he read in the 172 manual it looked like it would be easier to fly than the Bo and it was set up just like the 172 he played with in flight simulator.
He taxied the 172 out and actually got it airborne. He said it was ‘really foggy’ so he couldn’t get very high (the AWOS showed 300’ ceilings about the time he took his flight). He said things were going great until he heard a big noise, felt the airplane stop suddenly, then tip up and slide backwards until it stuck the ground and stopped with the nose in the air. He was able to open the door, fall out onto the ground, and walk home.
The plane struck power lines. The prop hung up in the wires and hit the ground tail first. The tail and fuselage crushed up to the back window but apparently that absorbed enough energy that the drunk didn’t get a scratch.
The feds ended up prosecuting him under federal charges and he got 15 years in a federal pen with no chance of parole. I had been leaving the keys in the plane when it was in the hanger but I never have since that time. He broke into my hanger before the one he stole the plane from. If mine hadn’t happened to be at my instructor’s airport, mine would have been the one hanging from the power lines.
Gary
