Then, after we've finished with that..
How about Fraudulent Misrepresentation ?

I now find that I'd unwittingly contributed to the furtherance of this scam (sorry, commercial venture), due to
being both a taxpayer (RAAF & ASA) and a corporate shareholder (Qantas).

All of those institutions had been misled.
I'm not terribly happy.
.

The CAA may decide to look into the matter, or they may not. If they decide not to anyone is perfectly entitled to instigate a private prosecution.

Remind me; who was TCT threatening with legal action?

I'm not sure if this one has come up before - it's the Singapore Airlines magazine, and they also thought that the UK to Oz flight was solo
https://www.silverkris.com/stories/i...t-1942-biplane

There was another article (start p8) featuring our adventurer in the Execujet magazine
https://issuu.com/juliane-josepha/docs/execujet_issue_6

If you plan on reading it in bed, take a sick-bag up with you.:yuk:

Well, I think that its plain as daylight that this women is a scam artist, but I think the effect she is having/has had on some very fine ladies is the real damage being done, let me explain . My youngest child is an airline pilot who came up the hard way, as a pilot I saw enough pilots kids who had a piss poor attitude having it fed to them , on a plate with a dish of daddies influence and help stirred in, so my wife and I were determined to avoid such methods. she did in fact gain a different profession but decided for various reasons to give flying a shot, so went to The Great White North from where every heading is South, earned enough money to get started and only at the very end do we do anything to help, she started as a float pilot up north for a Indian band {very well run by the way} and just loved it, even loading dismembered Moose and various other critters chopped into chunks so that could fit into the aircraft { and dining on most of them, }she then did fire spotting and bombing for two seasons, then onto medevac for a few seasons and lastly onto the airlines, now flying a 737. Why have I told you this apart from being a proud father? She unlike Curtis drain valve has paid her dues and made the grade, and unlike this DOB is not a bull****er, or total phony who has angered all those women who have made the grade by skill and determination, she needs to put a sock in it and go hide somewhere, and certainly stay away from the ladies in Canada! {there, now I feel much better}

Sorry to make you feel bad again Clunkdriver but I was talking to a journo today and she said something that made me shiver. It seems there is a rumour - just a rumour mindst - that TCT was up for an OBE and that this may have been deferred until New Year. Perhaps the smell of a scandal was in the air and it was hoped that an air-freshener of statements and a timely delay would clear the atmosphere. As this is a Rumour Network I think it fair to throw that into the mix. Very much in the same vein that there used to be a rumour that these flights were not solo as had been claimed - suckering vast wads of sponsorship out of beguiled old men.

If there is any truth in it then it still stinks and would be one of the greatest abuses of the Honours system we are likely to witness. People far more adept than I at fact-finding are on this.

One thing that still niggles at my curiosity are the career claims. I said in an earlier post that the dates don't stack up. How long would you need to be at the Foreign Office to call it a career? How long would you have to work at De Beers to qualify as a career diamond-valuing gemologist? ...and still have time to fit in the trans Africa flight in an Antonov, the months long journey back in a truck, a move to NZ and working to get a PPL, CPL and Instructor Rating - paying for it all piecemeal on waitressing tips. She must have had some good tippers because all this was done and she managed to buy the PT22 Ryan back in 2004. As a matter of interest, how much would one of those set a mere mortal back in smarties?

Nah, pull the other one chuck, it has bells on. You're going to need a mighty powerful air-freshener because this smells fishier than a barrel full of rotting cod.

Here's another newspaper article to add fuel to the "solo" fire:

Vintage Boeing biplane takes reassembly stop in Everett - seattlepi.com

There are several photos of Ewald managing the reassembly of the Stearman at Paine field.

I particularly like the caption of Image 8:

It has long been (rather unfairly) said that OBE stands for Other Buggers Efforts, but such an award to TCT would truly be an obscenity along those very lines.

It must not be allowed to happen.

There is some interesting debate on her wiki entry talk section.

Satco posted this..

I cannot comment on DeBeers but she openly admits to not having a degree so any Foreign Office employment must have been at a very junior clerical level. She appears to bolster any sort of minor experience to quote in her 'career' section on wiki. Hence on her trip in an AN2 to Cape Town she is described as crew despite holding no Russian pilots licence.

[OBE]

Well, the custodians of the "Order of..." don't like it being held by disreputable people:

Conrad Black loses order of Canada | CTV News

Perhaps if TCT were actually prosecuted of a true offense, the OBE would be off the table....

You can always send an email here: [email protected]

They have my opinion.

PM

India Four Two,

In response to your post I have emailed Daniel DeMay,the Seattle journalist who wrote the story,asking where the solo claims came from.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/artic...in-6932565.php

I have asked him if the above was "misreporting".

That was an allegation levelled at the press in last Saturday's Times.

Can I suggest some of you also write to Daniel? It will be interesting to see if he was sent a press release with those solo claims.

[email protected]

She admits she could have done more to correct misleading reports that made liberal use of the phrase “flying solo”.

“I wish we’d sorted that misreporting out but I can’t do everything all of the time,” she said.


There were 3 trips over 3+ years. Cape - UK, UK - Australia & then the USA trip.
Over the WHOLE time, she has been posing ALONE for interviews to misrepresent the fact she only flew for 10% of the time.

She also says that she wished she had done more regarding the misrepresentations - I wonder if TCT has ANY evidence over this 3 year period of correcting ANY of the articles. I most certainly did not see any statement by her until June 2016, and that was only because she was still attempting to keep the lid on the fraud of worldwide magnitude involving big big money.

Surely, Artemis Investment Managment must by now know that their name has been plastered all over this airframe surrounding such misrepresentation. Even TCT acknowledges the misrepresentation but says that she wished she did more.

Having just retired as a director of a finance company, and therefore held as a "fit and proper person" under FCA regulations, I've made this area my contribution (I'm also ex-military, so have not ruled out a letter to the top downstream either).

I have been watching/searching Artemis reasonably closely and have not seen any sign that they are continuing with TCT since this all kicked off. If they do continue, I know who to go to to get on their radar at board level in a fkn hurry.

Does anyone know if the aircraft is still being shown in public with the same livery (and if so, any verifiable photos?).

Artemis are listed on her BiaB web page under "Partners". But note the caveat:

" Partners of the US Transcontinental Flight 2016

Global Sponsors"

My understanding (complicated by the fact that nothing is what seems with this lady) is that the May 2016 flight was curtailed by the crash...have I got that right?

It's fkn staggering, given the commercial responsibilities of her advertised corporate partners, that even this simple fact is not easily evident on her website???

Anyway...as far as I can tell it's all "past tense" now. From the Artemis perspective, I am interested in two things:

Are they still a sponsor?
Will (or have they already) told her to get their logo's off her aircraft/website etc.

I doubt they can do much about the historic imagery because they gave their approval at the time and now the photos are part of history and probably also owned by TCT/BiaB.

People - Just so you know, emails related to the award of gongs such as the OBE are read by real people in the Cabinet Office. My reply took just a few hours and said my views would be taken into account, as I am sure everyone elses are. But the weighting of mine will be pretty low. And while I can not guarantee yours will be the email that tips the scales, it will add to the noise. Furthermore, we all now know everyone keeps copies of emails that may come back to bite you in the bottom so in that vein, I requested the Cabinet Office not to do another Philip Green or Fred Goodwin.

PM

Not that I’m suggesting that TCT is anything of the sort but, if I were a brilliant, imaginative narcissist/fantasist who adored having my photograph taken - especially with rich and influential people, and with aeroplanes – what would I do? I would latch onto a large company with an energetic PR machine …….. and let them do all the work for me.

As I asked on PPRuNe earlier, for the various flying awards, the hon PhD etc – and now with the proposed OBE – just WHO is putting TCT’s name forward???

BTW - for those who like looking at photographs of TCT posing ……. there are some more on here:

https://www.facebook.com/pg/an2ocean...=page_internal

Care needs to be taken with some of the wilder claims that are starting to fly about. The paragraph above is a case in point.

Working as a "Pilot". The author of the above is quite wrong in saying one cannot earn any revenue while flying as a PPL. One cannot earn money (ie be paid for one's services as...) as pilot with a PPL but Tracy was not, as far as we know, employed and paid as pilot. That she was paid anything is probably in doubt as she set up the expedition and the income was allegedly from a film documentary. Even if she did earn money from the trip she'd quite correctly say it was for being expedition leader. The fact that she flew during the trip has no bearing on the matter unless she specifically took money for doing so. It would be a different matter if her contract stated "Pilot" as her position within the team of course. Remember, you can fly the company's Bizjet (even a 747) on company business on a PPL as long as that isn't the major part of your job and you are genuinely employed as something else, eg Chaufferur or Office Cleaner, but not as pilot.

Many people write books about their flying exploits, that's making money from flying by anyone's definition but doesn't require a CPL. If this were the case then every film or doco made with PPLs flying in them - and there must be hundreds, would fall foul of these rules too. They don't. Go figure.

Calling herself a Pilot or Adventurer cannot be illegal as long as you don't seek fraudulent advantage from doing so, ie charge someone for acting as such when not qualified. You can call yourself what you like, it ain't illegal.

I believe it is absolutely incorrect to suggest that her activities as we understand them required a CPL.
Let's keep our enthusiasm in check people, it helps the cause not one jot to go making wild and incorrect accusations and try to stick to facts, shall we? We are supposed to be pilots, after all, and we should know the regs...

Agreed. Until recently, I recall her Wikipedia page listing "Occupation - pilot" which has a CPL connotation. But it appears that within the last week of so this has been changed (with a lot of impassioned discussion) to no longer list an occupation at all.

As we have seen before, erroneous information is being quietly withdrawn or softened. Not the recognition we could hope for, but something I suppose.

In any case, as TCT presents her objective as outreach, and inspiring, that is best done from a position of undoubted compliance.

Much as I hate to contribute to this thread, I don't think the last sentence of this is correct:
As I understand the flights and the regulations (ie not very well) the aircraft was N-registered and the pilot was flying on a Part 61.75 PPL. The flight therefore should have conformed to the Part 61.113 regulations. Even if she may not have been paid for the actual flying, there are two potential pitfalls:

• Although business flights may be undertaken, they must be incidental to the business of the company. I'm not sure a film production company called "Bird in a Biplane Ltd" could argue the flights were incidental to its business.
  
• As her engineer, Mr Gritsch seems to have been transported as an employee or contractor of the business. His transport may not be considered by the FAA as incidental to the company's primary business.

Of course, in addition to me having simply misunderstood the rules, it's quite possible that she or the company received dispensation from the FAA prior to the flights. Given the complexity of FAA regulations, it's also quite possible there are other rules which would allow such a flight to be made.

This AvWeb article goes into more detail on how the FAA applies the rules.