“Charlie” Tri-Pacer N897IC

“This one is me flying N8971C in 1966 or 1967. All of these photos were taken during the same flight by a friend of mine - - who was killed in an airplane accident shortly after these pictures were taken.”

               Courtesy of Richard Romley

   It was just another statistic until its previous owner, Richard Romley, emailed me. “I stumbled onto your web site while playing with a search engine (Google) looking for references to aircraft I have owned in the past. What a shock to find my very first airplane, Tri-Pacer N8971C listed on your Bermuda Triangle web site! I was, and am, shocked. I have flown that airplane twice to the Bahamas via W. Palm Beach— without incident— myself! . . . This is the first I heard of anything happening to "Charlie"— although I knew the tail number was no longer listed in the
           aircraft registry. By the way, "Charlie" was a 1953 135HP
           tripacer. I bought it in 1965 (while living in the Binghamton,
                 NY area) from a guy who had it based at the
               Chenango Bridge, NY airport (dirt strip). It was then based for
             the three years I owned it at Tri-Cities Airport in Endicott, NY.
             I sold it in 1968 to a guy who lived somewhere in the suburbs
             of Philadelphia— I can't remember exactly where.”

               Richard’s memory served him well. The NTSB “Brief” showed
           that the last course of the plane was from West Palm Beach,
           Florida, to Albion, New Jersey, near the new owner’s home in
           the suburbs of Philadelphia. It was August 4, 1969. The Brief,
           however, had little more than the by-now-typical deduction:

       “Aircraft Damage and Injury Index Presumed.” The age of the pilot was
       listed as 25. He carried one passenger.

   I started to communicate with Richard. He had offered to dig up some old photos of “Charlie” for my web site. I had hopes he could elaborate on who the owner was. Although he couldn’t remember his name (it had been 32 years), he did recall some interesting memories. “. . .I can't stop thinking about this. I can remember the night this guy bought the airplane— he was SO excited. He paid me $2995, $5 less than I had paid 3 years earlier! That was the best bargain I ever had in aviation! I guess I made out much better than he did.”

   Soon Richard began finding old papers on the airplane, “You've really got me going here! I have found some more stuff— owner's manual for the airplane— some repair paperwork. . .” He even found his purchase papers, but the sales papers eluded him. He had hopes the new owner’s name might be listed. He started routing around for his log (in case he mentioned his name). “As I recall, I flew down to his airport to pick him up— then we flew back to Binghamton, NY (my home airport) together— did the paperwork there— and then he left alone with the airplane.” Richard did recall that the guy was just about his age, 25, and was just so thrilled to have purchased his Tri-Pacer.

   One year later, the Tripacer vanished with its new pilot and one passenger while en route back to Albion, N.J., from West Palm Beach, Fla., where he and his passenger must have been vacationing. No trace of it was ever found, nor was any Mayday ever heard.

   Some 32 years later, Romley discovered his “Charlie” had vanished. “I still can't believe what happened to that airplane!” he reiterated to me. But thanks to this discovery, for the first time, photos of N8971C come to light plus information that takes this “ordinary disappearance” out of the statistics and sets it in the light of human drama that would surround all disappearance in the Bermuda Triangle if all the information could be uncovered (accident reports prior to 1978 are still officially missing or destroyed).

N8971C. Courtesy of Richard Romley