Someone keeps stealing, flying, fixing and returning this man's plane. But why?

Los Angeles Times

6 days ago

While Jason Hong was celebrating his 75th birthday, he suddenly found himself thinking about his 1958 Cessna Skyhawk, a white and red single-engine beauty with colorful stripes that he calls his 'old treasure.'
He doesn't fly it much anymore, but given the occasion he resolved to visit his plane as soon as he could to 'say hi,' like a lifelong friend you see around holidays and special occasions.
Hong headed to Corona Municipal Airport after church on July 27, but when he got there, the plane was not where he'd left it. Hong was dumbfounded.
'I got confused,' he said. 'I thought, did I park it somewhere else, did the airport manager move it? But I looked all over.'
It was gone.
Hong was so shocked, he initially didn't know who to reach out to about a missing, stolen plane. He wondered, did someone fly it out of the airport unnoticed? How long had it been missing?
The questions piled up. But the mystery only deepened.
As Hong would come to find out, the colorful aircraft had been flown across Southern California by an unknown pilot, unnoticed, in a series of joyrides — or joy flights — at least twice before and then simply returned to the airport. Both Hong and police were left scratching their heads.
The first time he discovered it missing, Hong reported it to Corona police, unsure that he'd ever see the plane he's owned for nearly 30 years again. After all, he thought, who steals an entire plane?
Then on the morning of July 29, he got a call from La Verne Police, telling him his plane was found in Brackett Field Airport.
'There's my airplane, sitting there in the airport,' Hong said, finding cigarette butts and garbage strewn about in the cockpit.
He barely took time to process what happened when, frustrated, he decided to pull out the battery from the plane, close it up, and go home. The plane wouldn't start without the battery, he figured, and he could come back the next weekend when he had time to clean and inspect it.
Except that, when he returned that Sunday, Aug. 3, the plane had vanished again.
Hong reported the plane missing again with La Verne Police, and wondered what was going on. It wasn't long before he got another call. This time, El Monte Police told him his plane was sitting at San Gabriel Valley Airport.
When Hong got there to inspect his plane, his confusion only grew.
'I found it with a battery,' he said.
It hasn't been just Hong who has found himself befuddled by his disappearing and reappearing plane.
'This plane just keeps disappearing out of the blue,' said Sgt. Robert Montanez of the Corona Police Department. 'It's just weird.'
Montanez said when Hong reported his plane missing the first time, he'd last seen the aircraft in May in the small Corona airport.
For police, a case of an entire plane being stolen was so rare, that officers used the same form used for stolen cars, to take Hong's report.
Officers are also aware that the plane has been taken multiple times, and returned, making the incidents more perplexing. But Montanez said there's no immediate indication as to who the culprit is.
'There's no camera video, there's no real leads as to who stole the plane,' Montanez said.
After finding his plane a second time, Hong said he's tried to put details of the thefts together, but the more he learns the more he grows confused about the circumstances.
Hong looked up his plane on Flight Aware, a site that tracks flights and aircraft, and found that on his 75th birthday, someone took off with his plane from La Verne airport at 9:54 p.m., for a 51-minute flight that at one point neared Palm Springs.
A few hours later, on July 26, the colorfully striped plane was in the air once again, this time for a brief 22-minute flight from Riverside County toward La Verne that started at about 1:30 a.m.
It was the next day that Hong would discover it missing.
At first, Hong said, he thought it might have been a random incident, but the details of the repeating incidents didn't make sense to him, he said.
The multiple flights indicate that, whoever has taken his plane has had some sort of flight training, since they've been able to land the plane on multiple occasions.
'Landing is not easy, so they're trained,' he said.
Hong said he's also found a headset in the plane, as well as a new battery to replace the one he removed, meaning this mysterious pilot had spent hundreds of dollars on equipment to get his plane back in the air.
The replacement of the battery, Hong said, also suggests its someone familiar with not just flying, but the mechanics of the plane as they seemed to have the tools and know-how about the type of battery needed, and how to install it.
Having his airplane stolen has been frustrating, Hong said. But learning that the suspect has also been spending money and equipment to use — and return — the plane has just been confusing.
'Someone breaks into your house, they're looking for jewelry or cash right?' he said, trying to reason with the circumstances. 'But in this case, what's the purpose? It's like someone breaks my window, and then they put a new one up.'
The fact that someone has been traveling in it to different airports also puzzles him.
The 75-year-old Yorba Linda resident said he's spoken to regular pilots and employees at the San Gabriel Valley Airport in El Monte, who said that they saw the plane flying in and out of the airport multiple times in July.
'On and off, they flew in and out, in and out, almost an entire month without knowing,' he said. 'This is really a rare situation.'
One regular at the airport, Hong said, told him he saw a woman, about 5 feet, 3 inches tall, and in her 40s or 50s, flying and sitting in the plane on multiple occasions. The man told Hong he had a conversation with her at one point, and distinctly remembered her because she was often seen sitting in the cockpit during the day, making people at the airport wonder why she wouldn't just relax in the air-conditioned airport lounge.
'Very strange,' Hong said.
For now, Hong has chained his plane in San Gabriel Valley Airport and said he's uncomfortable flying it until he can thoroughly inspect it.
Other than that, he's not sure what to do to keep his plane grounded, or to find out who has been secretly flying it out.
'I have no idea what to do,' he said. 'It's the strangest thing.'