 |
The Plights of Planes |  |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
(Contributed by George Horn)
Looking to sell my Baron and get back to basics in a Cessna 170B, I visited your site today, and was very impressed. I've been in this business as a professional pilot for 33 years, and am still learnin'!!
About three and a half years ago, while shopping for a twin, I located a Travel-Air in Calif. that seemed to fit the bill. Owned by another professional pilot who cared about maintenance and who had taken care of the bird for many years, I was confident that I'd found my dream plane. Before spending too much time and money on travel (to avoid the ever frequent junk one finds at the end of the expensive trip), I'd begun to request faxes of the last annual, the last engine overhaul, and any logged damage. As the seller and I made final arrangements to get together to close the deal, we came to the question of logbooks.
It seems that all the logs weren't available, which for me, killed the deal. But, he explained, there was an irrefutable explanation. The airline pilot he had bought the plane from had once owned a flight school, and the hangar burned in 1971 at Podunk airport, and all the flight school records were burned up including the aircraft logs. But, he said, the accountant for the school had all the business records at home working on taxes, and the logs were completely re-constructed from invoices. Besides that, the school and it's owner had owned the bird since new, and the chief inspector of the school had been the one to perform all inspections and repairs since new, so, it was a simple matter to accurately and completely re-construct the logs. The seller stated that the first logbook entry he was in possession of, so stated all this, and he was sure I would find everything acceptable. I told him to fax that entry to me as well.
|
I've become a dubious sort, having been in this business for over 30 years, so I followed up on the story. I got very sneaky, and I called the public library in Podunk, and asked the librarian to research a 1971 hangar fire at the airport. The next day she called me to inform me she would fax me the newspaper article about the hangar fire in hangar #2 which burned up all the local flight schools records, but the planes were safely gotten out of danger. I couldn't believe it, but it seemed to be true. So, just as I was about to break my rules and buy a plane without all the logs, the librarian casually asked, "Why are you interested in that fire?" I explained, and miraculously, she said that her ex-husband was a mechanic who had worked at the flight school that burned. I couldn't believe the coincidence. She went on to explain that he was now a professor of aviation maintenance technology at a leading tech school in St. Louis. I got his phone number from directory assistance, and called the man, simply to glean whatever other interesting memories he might have of what I was now certain was to become my new dream-plane. He and I had an interesting conversation in which he confirmed the fire, and the fact that the Travel airs had escaped damage. In fact, the school had two Travelairs, and they both had been fine aircraft. "Which one are you buying?", he asked. I told him the tail number. "Funny", he said, "Funny how time plays tricks on one's memory. I now realize I can't even remember the tail nos." I read him his log entry, which had seemed professional and correct. "That doesn't sound like the way I make my sentences.", he said. "Do you have a fax machine?", I asked. "Yes." "Then I'll fax this to you", I said. Now, how many people would have gone this far, I ask you? And how many people would have had the good luck to actually talk to a librarian divorced from the man who made the log entry in question? Is there a God, or what? In less than ten minutes, the man called me back and said, "That's not MY signature! That's a forgery!!" When I called the seller back and delivered the bad news, his irate comment was that he was not ABOUT to lower his price! I informed him that I was not trying to induce him to lower his price. I was only informing him I was not interested in his airplane, and that perhaps he might wish to visit with the man from whom he had purchased it, Goodbye. Caveat Emptor!! Click on the arrow for Terrible Tale #2... |
|
© George Horn |
