A weekend in Nashville ended on a low note for a Georgia aviator whose plane was ravaged by a thief — even though he paid a company to watch over the aircraft.
To make matters worse, pilot Raymond Daniel said that following the stressful ordeal that cost him $12,000 worth of equipment — he wasn’t given much help and was only offered a sandwich.
Daniel and his wife returned to John C. Tune Airport last week to find that their Beech 24 Sierra was one of several planes that had been broken into.
“She got in and she noticed the avionics missing, and so we went back inside and they didn’t look surprised when we walked in there, and I told them that we had a problem because they had already discovered four other planes that had been broken into,” Daniel told News 2 Wednesday.
Navigation devices such as a transponder and two GPS devices had been swiped from the plane.
The airport told the couple they had video of a suspect scaling the fence, but their plane was parked out of the surveillance camera’s view.
But Daniel said that shouldn’t have been a factor considering he had paid a special service called Contour to park and watch over his aircraft while he was away.
“We were left to figure out where to stay, transportation, everything was all on us, and had no offer from them for anything, except for a sandwich,” Daniel said.
Luckily for the couple, Daniel is a skilled aviator and managed to figure out the 275-mile journey home through memory — as well as special clearance from the air traffic control team at Georgia’s Poole Farm Airport.
“Basically, we just came back home without radio or nav. I just flew by the ground reference all the way back home,” Daniel said.
The airport authority told the outlet that its officers identified a suspect, who was arrested in Missouri days after the theft.
The Daniels’ expensive aviation equipment, however, is still in the wind.
Neither Contour nor the Airport Authority responded to The Post’s request for comment.
