On the who owns what question.
The airplane is/was US registered - so unless one is a US citizen one cannot register it in one's own name - one needs a properly formed trust company.
So my airplane is registered to SAC in the UK - so far as the FAA and everyone else is concerned they own it - but they merely hold it in trust.
I think that could be in someway connected to this who owns question.
This whole thread is fascinating. I remember seeing the first stories in the press and thinking "loadsa money" - we all know sponsored things are never "quite" as they seem, the selfless are not so, nothing is as it seems. This feeling was all the greater with the SOA/TCT story - we all knew there would be "support" systems and TCT would be shepherded to the next corporate stop enroute with minimal risk.
The only odd thing was why not a Moth of some kind - cause a Stearman is safer if more expensive to operate.
Do feel some sympathy for TCT though - I get the sense of a woman who got on a moving escalator and found herself to a point where it was just too late to jump off; that said why one wonders did she accept the laurels being heaped upon her, she could have declined the awards, but then it was a sponsored trip and the awards kept the publicity ball bouncing so maybe she was contractually obliged to go along with it - we all need to know?
A coming clean statement seems well past due?