CaptW5
1st Apr 2006, 17:39
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/14237886.htm
HONDURAS
Abandoned jet gets a $265,000 ticket
A luxury jet abandoned at Tegucigalpa's airport kept officials and the media wondering why anybody would ditch a $4 million plane.
BY JOE MOZINGO
[email protected]
TEGUCIGALPA - Drug-smuggling planes abandoned after delivering their illicit cargo litter remote dirt landing strips all over Central America.
But abandoning a $4 million corporate jet at the international airport of a country's biggest city is something new.
On Feb. 24, a Mexican-registered Gulfstream GII -- a luxury jet that can fly at up to 450 mph and carry up to 14 passengers in commodious comfort -- landed at the Honduran capital's Toncontín airport late at night. The pilots have not been seen since.
When Honduran authorities revealed the case on March 10, the media jumped on the case of the Jet Misterioso as proof of growing sentiments that drug traffickers are taking over the country, and that authorities do little to stop them. Politicians also jumped into the fray.
''This is an indicator that there is a constant violation of our airspace,'' Honduran President Manuel Zelaya told The Miami Herald. ``There are regions of this country that are dominated by drug cartels.''
While officials sought out the owner, the luxurious jet was parked conspicuously amid an area of modest private planes, most of them Cessnas. The closest in size was the U.S. Embassy's twin-engine Beech King Air.
Police searched the jet with dogs and found no evidence of illegal drugs.
DETAILS OF THE FLIGHT
As time passed, a few details about the plane began to emerge -- but not an explanation for its abandonment.
The two Mexican pilots landed at 11:13 p.m., more than an hour after the airport generally closes. Because the runway is considered one of the most dangerous in the world -- short and surrounded by mountains -- night-flying is not the norm. (In the 1990s, construction crews shaved off one of the nearby hills to make the approach safer.)
On the ground, the pilots filled out immigration and customs paperwork. They told the civil aviation authorities they were bringing the jet from Mexico to show a potential buyer here. And then they went to a Marriott hotel.
At 6:50 a.m. the next day, they boarded a commercial TACA flight back to Mexico and have not returned since. And no buyer showed up to see the jet.
As the mysterious plane aroused deepening intrigue in the media over subsequent weeks, authorities revealed that the owner was a Mexican banker named Mario Alberto Andrade Mora. It also turned out that the jet's registration and insurance in Mexico were set to expire 47 minutes after the plane landed in Tegucigalpa.
That last fact caused all sorts of speculation. Officials here suggested that Andrade Mora was having legal problems in Mexico, and just needed to get the jet out before it was confiscated.
But more difficult to explain was the plane's route.
According to the El Heraldo newspaper, it left the Maiquetia international airport, near Caracas, Venezuela, at 4:15 p.m. en route to Puebla, Mexico, but landed hundreds of miles away, near Mérida, Mexico, in the Yucatán peninsula, at 10:10 p.m.
From there, it flew back south to Tegucigalpa, maybe stopping in Guatemala, maybe not, according to officials.
The sub-director of Honduras' civil aviation authority, Boris Ferrera Andrews, said all the plane and pilots' documents were in order at the time. ''The flight was coming to Toncontín, normal, normal, normal,'' he said.
PARKING FEES
But after a day on the tarmac, the pilots had not paid the airport parking fees, and eventually the attorney general impounded the jet.
On March 20, a foreign lawyer for the owner in Mexico arrived to reclaim the plane. But the government says he must pay about $265,000 in parking fees and fines because its navigation permits expired. The lawyer, Higuera Zogaib, told the Honduran press he would challenge this but did not shed any light on why the pilots ditched the jet.
In the end, the riddle of the Gulfstream GII may simply devolve into a legal scrap over one of the world's most expensive parking tickets.
HONDURAS
Abandoned jet gets a $265,000 ticket
A luxury jet abandoned at Tegucigalpa's airport kept officials and the media wondering why anybody would ditch a $4 million plane.
BY JOE MOZINGO
[email protected]
TEGUCIGALPA - Drug-smuggling planes abandoned after delivering their illicit cargo litter remote dirt landing strips all over Central America.
But abandoning a $4 million corporate jet at the international airport of a country's biggest city is something new.
On Feb. 24, a Mexican-registered Gulfstream GII -- a luxury jet that can fly at up to 450 mph and carry up to 14 passengers in commodious comfort -- landed at the Honduran capital's Toncontín airport late at night. The pilots have not been seen since.
When Honduran authorities revealed the case on March 10, the media jumped on the case of the Jet Misterioso as proof of growing sentiments that drug traffickers are taking over the country, and that authorities do little to stop them. Politicians also jumped into the fray.
''This is an indicator that there is a constant violation of our airspace,'' Honduran President Manuel Zelaya told The Miami Herald. ``There are regions of this country that are dominated by drug cartels.''
While officials sought out the owner, the luxurious jet was parked conspicuously amid an area of modest private planes, most of them Cessnas. The closest in size was the U.S. Embassy's twin-engine Beech King Air.
Police searched the jet with dogs and found no evidence of illegal drugs.
DETAILS OF THE FLIGHT
As time passed, a few details about the plane began to emerge -- but not an explanation for its abandonment.
The two Mexican pilots landed at 11:13 p.m., more than an hour after the airport generally closes. Because the runway is considered one of the most dangerous in the world -- short and surrounded by mountains -- night-flying is not the norm. (In the 1990s, construction crews shaved off one of the nearby hills to make the approach safer.)
On the ground, the pilots filled out immigration and customs paperwork. They told the civil aviation authorities they were bringing the jet from Mexico to show a potential buyer here. And then they went to a Marriott hotel.
At 6:50 a.m. the next day, they boarded a commercial TACA flight back to Mexico and have not returned since. And no buyer showed up to see the jet.
As the mysterious plane aroused deepening intrigue in the media over subsequent weeks, authorities revealed that the owner was a Mexican banker named Mario Alberto Andrade Mora. It also turned out that the jet's registration and insurance in Mexico were set to expire 47 minutes after the plane landed in Tegucigalpa.
That last fact caused all sorts of speculation. Officials here suggested that Andrade Mora was having legal problems in Mexico, and just needed to get the jet out before it was confiscated.
But more difficult to explain was the plane's route.
According to the El Heraldo newspaper, it left the Maiquetia international airport, near Caracas, Venezuela, at 4:15 p.m. en route to Puebla, Mexico, but landed hundreds of miles away, near Mérida, Mexico, in the Yucatán peninsula, at 10:10 p.m.
From there, it flew back south to Tegucigalpa, maybe stopping in Guatemala, maybe not, according to officials.
The sub-director of Honduras' civil aviation authority, Boris Ferrera Andrews, said all the plane and pilots' documents were in order at the time. ''The flight was coming to Toncontín, normal, normal, normal,'' he said.
PARKING FEES
But after a day on the tarmac, the pilots had not paid the airport parking fees, and eventually the attorney general impounded the jet.
On March 20, a foreign lawyer for the owner in Mexico arrived to reclaim the plane. But the government says he must pay about $265,000 in parking fees and fines because its navigation permits expired. The lawyer, Higuera Zogaib, told the Honduran press he would challenge this but did not shed any light on why the pilots ditched the jet.
In the end, the riddle of the Gulfstream GII may simply devolve into a legal scrap over one of the world's most expensive parking tickets.