Oopsie at the airport.....this time it's our oopsie!

We had a "big" oopsie at the airport....a pilot had a really bad (bouncy) landing and damaged our rental airplane.

 He said that he bounced on the runway a couple of times and then ran off the side of the runway.....here is a photo of the end of the prop....it's supposed to be straight!

Impact with the asphalt is not a good thing for a spinning metal propeller!!

The propeller was not the only thing damaged.  The engine would be required by the FAA to be dismantled, the nose gear attachment is bent....and the belly skin is also damaged.  You can see that "something's not right".....the red/grey stripe painted on the airplane is supposed to be level with the ground!

The insurance adjuster flew up from Florida and quickly determined the airplane was a "total loss".....so we started looking for a replacement!


The next day, we found a Piper Cherokee online near Minneapolis that looked perfect. 

We got one-way tickets flying out of Fayetteville Airport on American Airlines.    We had never flown commercially out of Fayetteville, but it's just over an hour from home and the price was right! 

TSA was a breeze - took about 3 minutes - but they did flag a little folding bottle opener that was in my bag.  It was part of a little "toiletry set" that I have carried for 10 years - you know - nail file, fingernail clippers, tweezers, etc.  It was absolutely harmless - no sharp edges whatsoever.  But, not worth fussing about - so I let them take it.  Weird....

Short hop on an old turbo-prop plane to Charlotte.   Had plenty of time to grab dinner at a neat little pub inside the Charlotte terminal.  Then on to Minneapolis.

The next morning, we met up with the seller.  Nice guy - a corporate pilot who flies for a big food company near Minneapolis.  The plane he was selling had been used for his daughter to get some of her pilot ratings before going to Florida to train for her Airline Transport rating.


Because his daughter had been flying it, he had made sure  the airplane was in excellent shape!

Really nice, low time airplane with lots of recent upgrades.

We looked over the logbooks and determined that we had a deal!  Within a few hours, we flew about 30 miles away to a maintenance shop to get an inspection done  so that the plane would be ready to "hit the ground running" when we got it home to NC.  Neat farm land out there!  More later!