A Minnesota teenager with no formal flight training pleaded guilty on Monday to regularly stealing a Cessna 150 for joyrides over the summer and fall while the airplane’s owner, an Air Force major, was deployed in Afghanistan.
Eighteen-year-old Geoffrey Biteman, from the aptly named city of Thief River Falls, Minnesota, reportedly taught himself to fly as he traversed northwestern Minnesota and northeastern North Dakota in the stolen Cessna. He was caught only after a worker at Thief River Falls Regional Airport noticed the teen filling the airplane’s tanks with regular gasoline from jugs he brought with him.
