Argh! aircraft vandalism!

[captain_flynn]

I dont know if anyones seen this but I saw this on the BBC news site and thought i'd share it with you all..

BBC NEWS | England | Bristol | Thieves raid plane left in field (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/7536584.stm)

Such a shame.

[Pilot DAR]

I've always been told by my insurance agent, in the case of an off airport landing, hire a security guard, the hull portion of insurance will pay. Reasonable things that you do to prevent further costs to be incurred following the initial "event" will probably be paid by the insurance company, rather than them paying a bigger claim. On the other hand, where you do not take measures to prevent further loss, the insurance may not pay.

I was once left responsible for a new IFR equipped Piper Dakota, which a friend crashed 95 miles from anywhere in Newfoundland. The local military commander told me to hire a helicopter, to go and have the plane stripped, before thieves did. I did, and the insurance happily paid for those additional costs.

Pilot DAR

[ChampChump]

Very nasty. There's more on the Other forum.

I'm not sure what the insurance situation would be over here, but I was lucky that the local policeman stood by until we could empty the aeroplane ourselves - and he carried the battery. He also put in two voluntary overtime hours rather than fill in any consequent mountain of paperwork if the locals arrived....

Aa a snapshot of the state of the country, that certainly showed the very best and worst aspects.

[IO540]

In the UK, you have a duty to minimise your losses. So for example if your roof gets blown off, you have a duty to cover it with a sheet to prevent further interior damage from rain.

My guess (never having done this) is that an aircraft insurer would certainly pay for security. Especially as it is easy enough to wreck a plane really badly through vandalism, enough to write it off.

I wonder if the thief can really flog a panel mount GPS on Ebay. A handheld certainly. But the market for stolen panel mount kit must be tiny - unless he has a handler already organised who changes the serial number.

[JayDeeFlyer]

Its a sad old state of affairs, even at our own little private strip (4 planes parked), the gates are now closed and locked at all times, apparently Pikies had been in and motoring around the farmyard, luckily they didn't get as far as the airstrip (well hidden), but I suppose they would love to weigh in some aircraft with current metal prices!

Must be pretty frightening to have an emergency put down, without these Scumbags trying to rob it rotten.

Browns Britains, worse than Thatchers Britain and that was bad!

~Alex~

[scooter boy]

What a shame for the pilot. I can sympathise having had 2 headsets, a GPS, an EPIRB and some other stuff taken from my aircraft while it was in the hangar at Bodmin a few years ago and am far more security conscious these days.

The decision about security of a landing site is even more pertinent in the rotary world where most landings are made off-airport.

This weekend I am in Wales by R44 and the choice was the local school field of the small town we are staying in or a small hotel 20mins away right out in the sticks. Security issues figured significantly in my decision and I chose the hotel.

A small minority of the populus inevitably manage to destroy our faith in the inherent honesty of human nature.

My solution - cut their knackers off.

SB

[Cusco]

A hangar at our strip which is pretty isolated but hidden was broken into last week: Apart from soundly trashing a pretty sturdy steel door/lock ,all they nicked was the occupier's reserve fuel supply in a number of jerrycans.

I hope they use it in as many cars as they can so they f**k up all their catalysers.

Cusco (I second dis-knackeration for the perps.)

[tegwin]

Theft from an aircraft is one thing, but vandalism to the airframe could be fatal...

I would love to be able to believe that no human being could purposefully sabotage an aircraft, but sadly I don't think I can!

Just hope you pick it up on a preflight...

[IO540]

I recently looked into a project not too dissimilar (in security terms) to a strip.

It's very easy and cheap to set up cameras, with software which detects movement, and emails images of such to a predefined email address. If there is no ADSL (no phone line available) this can be done with GSM (GPRS/3G).

Lots of people complain about hangar rash but, even for a hangar containing 7 digits worth of planes, they have not spent £3000 on a fairly basic system taking regular images of the hangar interior and optionally emailing them out.

Even the cheapest CCTV/recorder system would stop hangar-rash because you could play it back and see who did it.

Securing a totally remote strip is not that hard. Somebody will 'always' be able to break into the building before anybody can get there (burglars/vandals tend to ignore the visible part of alarm system because they know the minimum time before somebody could possibly turn up) but they will get caught because you will have them on a concealed video.

But if your stuff gets nicked from a hangar, the culprit is most likely very close to home...

[Cusco]

Sadly our hangar owner had just such a system linked to his mobile phone and rigged to send texts on activation of the alarm.

Unfortunately he had gone on holiday and turned his mobile off. When I finally contacted him by email an hour after the break in was discovered, and some twelve hours after the breakin (we subsequently discovered) he turned on his phone the discover it had been texting him from the moment of the break-in and for a further five hours.

Not much cop if your phone's switched off..........

Cusco.