HAYDEN - Greg Delavan, the Coeur d'Alene Airport manager, said a man was arrested this past weekend for trying to steal an approximately $20 million airplane.
Delavan said his operations manager, Phillip Cummings, was doing an early morning runway check before daylight Sunday when he saw the lights on to a Bombardier Challenger 600 multi-passenger corporate jet.
"It looked like they were getting ready to go," Delavan said. "Then the lights went out."
He saw a couple other things that left him scratching his head, so Cummings drove toward the plane and pointed his headlights on it.
"He could see someone looking out," Delavan said. Cummings called for law enforcement.
Soon a man walked down the plane's stairs. The man said he was a mechanic and the plane had electrical problems.
But the man had no identification and no tools, and he didn't have a vehicle, claiming he had arrived by taxi cab.
Soon deputies from the Kootenai County Sheriff's Office arrived and arrested the man, Delavan said. A sheriff's office spokesman confirmed Thursday a man was arrested for the incident, but didn't identify him.
The guy likely would have crashed the plane if he had managed to take off, Delavan said. He was surprised how far the man had gone toward stealing it.
"It's not easy to fly one of those planes," he said. "This is not the kind of airplane the 'Barefoot Bandit' was using."
The Barefoot Bandit, 22-year-old Colton Harris-Moore, was a serial burglar who led authorities on a chase through several states, including Idaho, and three countries. He stole multiple airplanes, but never a corporate jet.
Original article: http://www.cdapress.com
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