Aircraft theft
 

Has it occured many times in aviation that airplanes have actually been stolen? and do you know what hapened afterwards?

I recall that this year, someone stole a Boeing 727 from Luanda Airport which was a bit of a mystery as it was never heard of again!

As a matter of fact when I was with the United States Marshal Service we had a King Air 200 stolen. :eek: No, I am not kidding.

The 200 was stolen from a small airport in Miami Florida. The last radar fix on the airplane was as it passed over the Florida Keys heading south. A couple of years later the DEA called us and said that they had found the King Air in South America and inquired if we wanted back.

We said not only no, but hell no.

Funny bit about this story is that we had seized the King Air from a South American Drug-lord. Because we had no maintenance records for the airplane we had all the inspections done on the airframe, overhauled both engines to zero factor specifications, put in new avionics, re-painted the aircraft and put in a new interior.

So then the standard joke became that all a drug-lord had to do to get his airplane overhauled from top to bottom was let us seize his airplane, do all the work and then steal it back.:p

The same thing happened to a Lear 28 (yes, a 28) except a US Federal Judge gave the Lear back after we had done the same work on that airplane.

Yeah that's an odd one ... so the dubious claim that a paid and named Flight Engineer took it to a disused military strip in Equatorial Guinea is pure fabrication? (I've only seen it on 9-11 conspiracy webpage).