Respected general aviation members held at gunpoint by police

This past weekend, local police in California ordered two of the most respected members of the general aviation community out of their plane at gunpoint when they believed the aircraft they had was stolen.

Confusion about an aircraft tail number led to John and Martha King being placed in handcuffs and put into the back of police cars until the matter was sorted out. The Kings are co-chairmen and co-owners for King Schools, Inc., a company that is used throughout the general aviation community for flight training.

The Kings were flying a single-engine Cessna 172 with the tail number N50545. Apparently N50545 was used on an older Cessna 150 aircraft that was reported stolen several years ago. Local police in Santa Barbara, Calif., met the Kings once they landed with the idea they were flying a stolen aircraft.

"Simply put, this incident is as outrageous as it is inexplicable and raises serious questions about the coordination of information among federal and local authorities,” said Craig Fuller, president of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) in Frederick, Md. The AOPA is a non-profit organization dedicated to keeping general aviation fun, safe, and affordable.

Fuller says it would have taken 30 seconds to check and discover sufficient information to raise serious doubt that the Kings were flying an older stolen Cessna 150.

Federal Aviation Administration records show in 2001 the tail number N5045 was issued to a Cessna 150 registered to Venus Aviation LLC in McKinney, Texas. In January 2009, the same tail number was re-issued to the Cessna 172 being operating by the Kings this weekend.

“We have every right to expect more from our government’s security officials than this,” Fuller said. “The Kings deserve an apology from senior officials with responsibility over the agencies involved and the general aviation community deserves a full accounting of what went wrong and just how the process will be fixed.”