Lsura’s Pit thread reminded me of this. In the various controversies over the UT president’s use of the school’s plane, it was mentioned that the plane (which is based in Knoxville) landed at an airport in Alabama (I think that’s where, IAC it was another state) nine times, and took off from that airport twelve times. Que? How is this possible? It seems to me that the plane couldn’t take off from an airport it hadn’t landed at, yet this one did. There’s no logical reason for them to truck the plane there for repairs, so that’s out. The newspaper article discussing the matter didn’t go into any details, and reported it as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. Any ideas?
What records are you refering to, airport, FAA flight plans, ATC contacts, tower contacts, FBO fuel orders, etc. ?
Well if it landed at an airport with a tower that was not open 24/7, then landing after it had closed but taking off after it had opened would cause this. That is just one thing, I have not enough information to tell if any other things could be involved.
Toer wrdords would probably be the easieswt of an reporter to obtain but it depends.
Got more details?
No more details as the article’s not available on the web and I don’t have a copy of it. I don’t recall if the article said what the source of the records were, but the guy was under pretty massive investigation, so I’d imagine that they’d be digging through everything they could get their hands on. I want to say that it was the flight plans they were getting this information from, but I’m not at all certain.
The discrepancy is likely a simple matter of incomplete records. As GusNSpot said, if the plane landed after the tower closed, there is not likely to be a record. Another possibility is that the airport doesn’t even have a tower. Many smaller airports keep track of take-offs and landings for the purpose of maintaining federal funding. They often do this from the FBO. If the person working at the FBO was busy, a landing here and there would be missed. I saw that kind of thing all the time at the airport where I used to work. The person manning the desk would get busy and either forget to log it, or be otherwise occupied. Other times, they would note a take-off or landing, but not catch the tail number. Entirely depends. They have multiple duties, so it is easy to miss something.
I would suspect the solution is that the plane actually took off and landed twelve times, but three of the landings were not logged by the airport. Simple answer.