Mysterious plane thefts, and returns, baffle owner

Someone has stolen a 1958 Cessna Skyhawk at least four times, flying it, fixing it and returning it to SoCal airports, in head-scratching case

- BY SALVADOR HERNANDEZ

JASON HONG'S 1958 Cessna Skyhawk has been stolen, and returned, multiple times in recent months.

While Jason Hong was celebrating his 75th birthday, he suddenly found himself thinking about his 1958 Cessna Skyhawk, a white and red single-engine beauty with colorful stripes that he calls his “old treasure.”

He doesn’t fly it much anymore, but given the occasion, he resolved to visit his plane as soon as he could to say “hi,” like to a lifelong friend you see around holidays and special occasions.

Hong headed to Corona Municipal Airport after church on July 27, but when he got there, the plane was not where he’d left it. Hong was dumbfounded.

“I got confused,” he said. “I thought, ‘Did I park it somewhere else? Did the airport manager move it?’ But I looked all over.”

It was gone.

Hong was so shocked, he initially didn't know whom to reach out to about a missing, stolen plane. He wondered, did someone fly it out of the airport unnoticed? How long had it been missing?

The questions piled up. But the mystery only deepened.

As Hong would come to find out, the colorful aircraft had been flown across Southern California by an unknown pilot, unnoticed, in a series of joyrides — or joy flights — at least twice before and then was simply returned to the airport. Both Hong and police were left scratching their heads.

The first time he discovered it missing, Hong reported it to Corona police, unsure that he would ever see the plane he has owned for nearly 30 years again. After all, he thought, who steals an entire plane?

Then on the morning of July 29, he got a call from La Verne police, telling him his plane had been found at Brackett Field Airport.

“There's my airplane, sitting there in the airport,” Hong said, finding cigarette butts and garbage strewn about in the cockpit.