Charles Mack offers plane to museum

Aviator Charles Mack, who set five world records flying around the globe in his single-engine airplane, has offered to have his aircraft displayed at a Paris museum.

The offer comes in response to an initial request last year for Mack’s A-36 Bonanza Beechcraft from Gen. Alain Brossier, director general of the Air and Space Museum at Le Bourget Airport in Paris. At that time, Mack said he could not afford to part with his plane without compensation and took a raincheck on the request.

This week, however, Mack announced that either an aviation group or the Beechcraft Corp. might replace his plane with one of equal age and condition, and he sent a letter to Brossier asking for formal confirmation of the initial request.

Mack’s plane is worth about $130,000, he said, and the drive to replace it has come from some members of the Florida Aero Club.

If that confirmation comes, Mack has offered to again fly his Bonanza non-stop from New York to Paris, possibly during June 1991.

The museum at Le Bourget is larger than its cousin at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, Mack said, adding that the French are very “aviation-conscious.”

Mack set his first record in August 1988 after returning from Paris days after arriving there. His second came after flying over the North Pole from Barrow, Alaska, to Helsinki, Finland. During that trip, he also set records by flying non-stop and solo from Finland to Paris, Paris to Iceland and then Iceland to Bangor.