Jason Hong, 75, has had his 1958 Cessna Skyhawk stolen, and returned, multiple times in the last couple of months, but he and police have no idea who has been taking the colorful plane.
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 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.
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“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 who 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 simply returned to the airport. Both Hong and police were left scratching their heads.
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