ELT Still On The Airplane Was Somehow Activated

It sounds like the beginning of a joke. You're sitting in a bar in Portland, OR when a bunch of military guys come in looking for a crashed airplane ... the one inside the building that the owners intended to hang from the rafters of the establishment.

But that's just want happened in February at the Vagabond Brewing pub in Portland, though the incident happened on a Monday morning before the taproom was officially opened.

It seems that the owners of the craft brewery and pub, a trio of retired Marines, had been looking for a "statement piece" to decorate their new business last September. The Willamette Week reports that they found a 1958 Cessna 310B that had been abandoned in Vanderhoof, B.C. in Canada for at least 10 years after the person flying the plane, who had no license or insurance, made a hard landing and fled the scene. The bar owners got the plane decommissioned through Canadian authorities and brought it back to Portland. One of the owners said "we basically traded a keg of beer for it."

It was just a few weeks later while the taproom was still under construction that they got the unexpected visit from the Air Force. It seems that somehow the plane's ELT had been activated and had been transmitting for two days, and they were looking for a downed plane

When they realized that it was not a crash but rather a display, the situation deescalated quickly. The ELT was removed, and the Airmen even posed for a photo with the device.

As far as we know, the plane is still in the rafters at the Vagabond Brewing pub.

(Image from Facebook)

FMI: Source report