Bloodhound

My wife used to work for Eaglemark, which is a small aircraft finance company. And incidentally is a division of Harley-Davidson - yes Harley finances aircraft. You'd be surprised on the number of people that default on aircraft loans. They are a small company and they make collection calls everyday. Although it wasn't exactly rare to repo, it was a little unusual because it's such a headache to deal with. They never got enough money for the aircraft to cover the loan. I don't think they cared one bit about the logbooks. As long as they had an airframe, they were happy. It is also fairly difficult to repo an aircraft because a lot of the are hangared and all the local airport junkies know everyone. As soon as they see someone they don't know snooping around, they start to get nosey. Also, many of the aircraft were in pieces because the owner took out loan after loan to pay for it and then pay for MX.

MEMpilot

Haha, I was flying two friends last month and had just switched to the tower frequency when I got: "We're going to need you to follow the squad car back to ______"

I was pretty scared that I unknowingly had done something terrible and that my career was over. However, when I shut down the plane and got out, I greet the police officer when a nervous Hello and he reassures me that I'm not in trouble. The plane though, was being repoed as the owner had defaulted on his payments.

Its really great the flight school decided to milk to the aircraft to the very last minute and then in the process, scare the crap out of me. The apologies didn't really cut it, as it still bothers me...

mike734

Repo Man -- Great movie.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087995/

Stormy Knight

I did just a little of this many moons ago (1980's). Fell into it through word of mouth (hey, ever fly an Aerostar?). One strong suggestion: if you find this kind of work (talk to lenders who hold the paper on airplanes) be sure and coordinate with law enforcement before you execute the "pickup". Be a real bummer to be doing time for grand theft. I always checked in with the local sherriff's office with the bank's paperwork authorizing the repo before I went anywhere near the aircraft.

cl601pilot

Unless you are picking it up in Mexico durring the middle of the night.