Pilot Fakes Death
 

Kind of surprised no one on here has (to my knowledge) mentioned anything about the bizarre story of the pilot that claimed his windshield imploded. He put the plane on autopilot, bailed out and let the plane crash in a neighborhood in Florida. Looks like he tried to fake his death because he was swindling a bunch of investors.

Anyone have any inside info on the guy? He was an acrobatic pilot, among other things.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/01/14/missing.pilot.found/index.html

I've heard about this over the past few days. I haven't read the article, but from what I've heard, he apparently wanted the plane to ditch over the Gulf of Mexico, but it ran out of fuel too soon and crashed on land instead. If it had crashed into the Gulf, not finding a body wouldn't have been a big deal. But because it crashed on land intact and no body was found nearby, they were able to deduce that some shenanigans had occured.

Wasted a perfectly good airplane, too! He has a pretty hot-looking wife. I guess she'll be moving on to greener pastures as he moves into the big house . . . .

His story has been circulating on a legal listserve to which I subscribe. Apparently he had stuff stashed around in different places, which is going to give some real teeth to the Federal criminal charges he is going to face about ditching that plane.

The real crime is what he did to that plane....a perfectly beautiful Piper...

The moral to that story is, if you're going to rip off a bunch of people, do it in grand style, get enough money to buy your way out of it, and know where to hide it so nobody else can find it . . . Bernie Madoff apparently knew how . . .

It only looks easy in the movies.

A Purdue grad!:o

X2

I noticed this story on the MSN home page. Figured someone here would bring it up.

I agree, the worst of it is the loss of the aircraft. Thank God it didn’t kill anyone on the ground. Or take out any valuable structure.

I’m thinking he must have thought it would make it out over the Gulf before it became a yard-dart. That way things might add up in his favor, with no body found, airplane last seen on radar over the water, no way to prove the screen didn’t come in on him, etc.

Instead – Oops !! A bit short. :rolleyes:

So much for being a so called “great pilot”. Looks to me like he may have missed a simple fuel consumption calculation on this one.

I’m with you. I feel for the loss of the plane.

I heard on one of the radio reports that some planes were scrambled after his mayday message and that they observed the empty plane cruising along on auto-pilot. If true, one more flaw in his pea-brained plan.