AirNet receiver seeking to sell Snow Aviation’s still-moribund C-130

As 2011 ended, Snow Aviation International Inc. made a court-ordered deadline to move its experimental Lockheed C-130 Hercules from a hangar at Rickenbacker International Airport with just hours to spare.

The Herk was towed to neighboring cargo flyer AirNet Systems Inc. in what was described as a temporary arrangement until a new propeller would make it flyable.

Founder and CEO Harry Snow Jr. told me then that he would work with his main investor and creditor in Cleveland, Moxahela Aviation LLC, to rejuvenate the business that never made a sale after promising some 500 jobs in 2001.

“Talk to me in the second week of January (2012),” he said.

Three years later, the plane is still sitting there on AirNet’s ramp at Rickenbacker, uncovered and exposed the elements.

“It has not moved one inch since 4 p.m., Dec. 31, 2011,” said Rich Kruse, who was the court-appointed receiver when Snow Aviation was evicted from Rickenbacker.

Now AirNet itself is in receivership, and its Georgia-based receiver filed a foreclosure lawsuit Tuesday on Snow’s C-130, seeking $997,000 in unpaid storage fees that continue to rack up at the rate of $1,000 a day.

Moxahela, a Cleveland investment firm, had paid $14,000 to AirNet under a lease agreement saying it would store the plane no more than two weeks. Moxahela owner Joseph Gorman died in 2013. I could not find a current telephone listing for Snow, of Gahanna, but sent an email seeking comment.

AirNet, a cargo operator that struggled since its main customer source dried up, has been operated by a court-appointed receiver since February. AirNet’s receiver is asking Franklin County Common Pleas Court to grant it possession of aircraft so it can sell it if necessary to apply proceeds to the unpaid lease.

“Because it’s an experimental aircraft, the buyer pool is much smaller,” said Columbus attorney Jerry Peer Jr., who filed the action on behalf of the receiver. He had represented Kruse in Snow’s eviction case.

It’s more likely the plane will be dismantled and sold for parts and scrap, he said.

Snow’s entire mission had been to extend the life of C-130s by retrofitting them, so the military could avoid scrapping old planes and buying new.

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