Kings Get Less Than Royal Treatment

On Saturday, August 28, well respected general aviation industry leaders John and Martha King completed an IFR flight into Santa Barbara, California. Upon landing, the Kings were met by Santa Barbara police, who had their weapons drawn. The Kings were handcuffed and placed into custody. It turns out that the Santa Barbara Police were asked to meet the aircraft upon its landing because it was listed as stolen in a federal law enforcement database. The listing showed a Cessna 150 with registration number N50545 as being stolen in 2002; however, what the database failed to indicate was that that registration number was deactivated and reassigned in early 2009 to the Cessna 172 being flown by the Kings. This is not the only time this has happened to this aircraft. A report by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association states that the aircraft being flown by the King’s was met by police once before — on its first flight after leaving the Cessna factory!

I think everyone understands and accepts that law enforcement officers have an important and dangerous job and occasionally mistakes occur. In this case, the Santa Barbara Police Department officers were simply doing their jobs, responding to a report, from the federal government, of a stolen aircraft. I doubt many in the industry would fault the individual officers for the way they handled the situation.

What is inexcusable is that two private citizens were subjected to detainment, at gunpoint, because our governmental agencies lack adequate procedures and resources to ensure that up-to-date aircraft registration databases are shared among and within those agencies. Considering the miracles of technology that are now so common in our daily lives, it is appalling that a system does not exist within our government that can prevent this type of mistake from occurring, especially since this was not the first time this aircraft had been misidentified as stolen!

NATA has long worked towards increasing standardization within the Federal Aviation Administration and other federal agencies, and believes that what happened to the Kings is symptomatic of the substantial issues with our federal government. NATA will continue to push for greater standardization, not just in regulatory interpretations but also in technology and procedures, throughout our government to help ensure that no other private citizens’ Saturday afternoons end the way John and Martha King’s did last weekend.

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