I encountered a minor problem while working on my private pilot ticket: Members of the Des Moines, Iowa, company’s flying club kept crashing their airplanes!
In one case, a member got into weather he couldn’t handle in a Tri-Pacer with minimal instruments. So he put her down in a cornfield. He wasn’t hurt, but the wings were torn off the light airplane. Then, a month after it was airworthy again, a member who hadn’t paid his member dues for two years but still had a key flew it. Whatever he did (we think he overleaned, causing the engine to detonate), he also found a handy cornfield in which to land. The Tri-Pacer survived all right, but the engine was completely trashed.
