California thief repeatedly steals old man’s plane & returns it better than they found it

An elderly man in California is at his wit’s end. His Cessna Skyhawk keeps getting stolen over and over again by a mysterious pilot who has evaded police detection entirely.

Every time it gets flown, the plane gets returned to a nearby airfield and, outside of some cigarettes and spare trash being in the cockpit, it often returns to its owner in better shape than it left.

75 year-old Jason Hong went to fly his plane on his birthday when he realized it wasn’t where he left it. And, after looking for a while, he accepted that the plane was gone. But, after calling the police, they discovered his plane in a different airport. It was just sitting there waiting for him.

After further investigation, Hong discovered that the thief had been flying his plane all over the place, landing in different spots across California.

Police left scratching their heads by bizarre plane thief

Investigating the thief has been a real head-scratcher for authorities. Entire planes getting stolen is so rare that police don’t even have documentation for it, and the rarity of this type of theft has made it difficult for authorities to figure out what’s really happening here.

““On and off, they flew in and out, in and out, almost an entire month without knowing,” Hong said to the Los Angeles Times. “This is really a rare situation.”

Whoever’s stealing his plane left their own equipment in there. The battery they replaced was left in the plane, and they also left a brand-new headset in there. Hong has no clue why this person is doing this to him, saying “it’s like someone breaks my window, and then they put a new one up.”

After asking people who are regulars in the San Gabriel Valley Airport, someone claimed they saw a short woman hanging out in his airplane for hours at a time and flying around at her leisure. That’s the only lead officers have on the suspect, and even then it’s vague at best.

There’s no video footage of the plane being taken or the person who was flying it, so identifying the culprit is almost impossible.

For now, Hong has chained up the plane in hopes that it’ll keep the thief away.