A Ghost Ship is an aircraft that flies around, but does not really exist. On paper that is. I heard this term years ago while talking with an older mechanic. He told me tales of smuggling, black market, and stolen aircraft.

I came across a situation with a “Ghost Ship” a couple of years ago. A customer brought his aircraft into our shop, after a recent purchase, looking for someone to perform the routine maintenance. He bought the aircraft from a bordering country, and he wanted us to do his annual early so that he could get a good inspection before he put his family in it.

The next day he rolled up to the front of the hangar. He handed us a squawk list written on the back of a motion sickness bag. We didn’t note anything out of the ordinary on this inspection, except a buckle under the right wing. We brought in the NDT crew and they performed their magic. No cracks, all was good. We did this for the next several years, but we always had an uneasy feeling about the airplane.

There was a web site that I found out about, shortly after his last Inspection, www.myairplane.com. A service for charts or something, but they had a link that allowed you to query the FAA and NTSB files. With this new tool I typed in the customer’s N-number. My uneasy feeling was right. It had nothing to do with the buckle, but the report said, “Aircraft stalled on takeoff, crashing into another aircraft parked on the ramp. Both aircraft were totally consumed by fire.” Weird! It was not consumed by fire; it was parked in my hangar. I immediately printed out the report and went to the NTSB website. I checked the dates and information on all of the aircraft that were involved. All of the information corresponded between the reports. So at this point we had a “Ghost Ship” sitting in our hangar.

Before alarming my customer with the tales of smuggling, black market and stolen aircraft, I ordered all of the hard files for all of the planes that were involved. The FAA files and the NTSB accident files turned out to be the most informative. After I received the files, I started to research every detail. After a long period of time, reading the reports over and over, I found the smoking gun.

This flight of fancy was sold out of the country, directly from the factory. During this process the aircraft was de-registered and exported. Eight years later while my customer’s aircraft was flying around down south, there was a horrible accident that involved an aircraft that was the same make and model, with very close serial numbers. Three years later, my client’s plane was imported into the United States. During this process, he received the N-number of the burned aircraft.

Along with the registration number, he had gotten a whole lot more, the entire file of the other airplane. In the defense of the situation, it did take me a long time to find this discrepancy. There were only two numbers that were different with the serial numbers, an eight and a three. They looked the same after everything was smudged and made smaller by the microfilm process.

After informing the customer, I started the process of clearing this up. The most important step to clear this up is to put all of the information that you gathered into an orderly fashion. Make notes and stick them onto the pages for easy reference. Key word here is easy. The less work that you make for the FAA, means the quicker your problem will be resolved.

The feds were contacted, and we sent a copy of all of our information to them. After several months, a visit, and tons of phone calls, the situation was resolved. It is easy to get the records on aircraft. Call the FAA record department in Oklahoma City, for a few bucks, they will send you all the information that you need. The NTSB is a little more entailed, but they are more than willing to help you.

Check the records on the all of the aircraft that you maintain on a regular basis. Your customers expect you to know everything there is to know about their plane, and more importantly it gives you a full history.

This may also aid you with some very important airworthiness decisions that may arise in the future. And you never know, you may have a “Ghost Ship”.

Mitch Muller is an owner of Rourke Aviation Inc., located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He turns wrenches on a daily basis, working on aircraft ranging from Cessnas to Boeings. Mitch holds an A&P and private pilot certificates.