Pilot Chase: Three Small Planes and the Remarkable People Who Owned Them

Three identical small airplanes are on the Beechcraft factory assembly line in Wichita, Kansas, when President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. It’s 1963. A half-century later, authors Janet Aisbett and Greg Gibbon follow scant clues across three continents to uncover the life stories of these sister planes and their colorful cast of owners. Read how the chase unfolded, and savor the resulting mini-biographies of people a little richer, a little bolder than most of us. These stories of American entrepreneurs, Australian opal miners, French industrialists and more, reveal the varied paths by which people develop a passion for planes and acquire the means to own them. This peep into that community will provide fascinating answers to the question: What’s it like to own a plane? and perhaps give pause to those who’ve always said they’d never want to go up in one.