Might as well kick off on a high note! Nice work if you can get it…
St. Mary’s County Regional Airport is home to a fleet of single-engine Cessnas, many of them owned by amateur pilots and parked in tidy rows just off the runway. But in a hangar at the edge of the grounds sits a Harrier, a hulking jet that takes off and lands vertically, cruises at speeds in excess of 600 mph and is similar to the Marines’ primary attack aircraft.
That is Art Nalls’s plane.
Nalls, a 53-year-old former Marine test pilot who made a fortune in real estate, has turned flying into an extraordinarily expensive hobby. He believes that his newest acquisition — the Harry, as he calls it — is the world’s only privately owned, flyable Harrier. Although Nalls wouldn’t say how much he paid for the plane, he said fuel alone costs about $75 for every minute in the air.
He certainly seems to be a guy who knows how to have a good time:
On a recent morning, in a lounge facing the runway, pilots swapped stories about Nalls’s latest adventure: Problems with the Harry’s hydraulic system forced an emergency landing at the military base in November, on its second flight. Since he couldn’t fly it back, Nalls had the jet hooked to a pickup truck and towed nearly eight miles to the airport, escorted by a half-dozen police cars. He sat in the cockpit, dressed as Santa Claus.
Good on him.
Man, I wish had the ability to piss away $5000 for an hour of flight time!