A weekend in Nashville ended on a bad note for a Georgia airman whose plane was ravaged by a thief — even though he paid a company to watch the plane.
To make matters worse, pilot Raymond Daniel said that following the stressful ordeal which cost him $12,000 in equipment, he did not receive much help and was only offered a sandwich.
Daniel and his wife returned to John C. Tune Airport last week and discovered their Beech 24 Sierra was one of several planes that had been burglarized.
“She came in and she noticed the avionics were missing, so we went back inside and they didn’t seem surprised when we came in, and I told them we had a problem because “They had already discovered four other planes that had been broken into,” Daniel told News 2 on Wednesday.
Navigation devices such as a transponder and two GPS devices had been removed from the plane.
The airport told the couple they had video of a suspect climbing the fence, but their plane was parked out of view of the surveillance camera.
But Daniel said that should not have been a factor given he had paid a special service called Contour to park and monitor his plane while he was away.
“We had to figure out where to stay, how to get around, it was all up to us and we had no offers from them for anything except a sandwich,” Daniel said.
Luckily for the couple, Daniel is an experienced aviator and managed to figure out the 275-mile return journey thanks to his memory – as well as special permission from Poole Airport’s air traffic control team Farm in Georgia.
“We basically came home without a radio or navigation system. I just flew over the ground reference to my house,” Daniel said.
The Airport Authority told the outlet that its agents had identified a suspect, who was arrested in Missouri days after the flight.
However, the Daniels’ expensive aviation equipment is still in trouble.
Neither Contour nor the airport authority responded to The Post’s request for comment.
New York Post
