How a man was able to steal a plane from Palo Alto Airport

PALO ALTO, Calif. (KRON) – KRON4 spoke to an aviation expert today about how a Florida man was able to steal a plane from the Palo Alto Airport before crashing it in Half Moon Bay on Thursday. He was not a licensed pilot.

A worker at the airport spent Friday afternoon repairing a fence that was cut open. Investigators believe this is how a man got into the airport Thursday night.

San Mateo County Sheriff’s deputies say 50-year-old Luiz Gustavo Aires stole the 1960s Citabria plane, flew it, and crashed it nose-down in the sand in Half Moon Bay.

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“Been doing this almost 20 years and this is a first for me,” said Sergeant Javier Acosta.

Acosta says deputies arrested Aires as he was walking away after crash-landing the plane just south of Poplar Beach. Several people were on the beach when the plane came down, and no one was injured.

KRON4 spoke to aviation expert Ross Aimer who said he could not find Aires in the registered database of pilots. But he says Aires had to have some knowledge of the plane that they call a “tail dragger.”

“It’s harder to fly it, as what you saw, the way it crashed onto the beach, he probably tried to land on the beach, but being a tail dragger kind of hard to land and the prop caught the sand and went down nose-down into the sand,” he said.

He also says the 1960s plane is easy to steal.

“May not even have a conventional ignition stick, so easy to hot-wire,” he said.

Aires was booked and charged with airplane theft.

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