Blaine pilot checked for violations

PRESQUE ISLE – A Blaine pilot who set an unofficial world record for takeoffs and landings could lose his license for allegedly violating flight rules.

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating what it says are “numerous” complaints made to it last week that Walter Mosher violated flight rules while setting his unofficial record on Nov. 23.

“We’re finding the facts,” Joe Simokoitis, an aviation safety inspector with the FAA Flight Standards District Office in Portland, said Monday during a telephone interview. “If in any way there are violations of FAA regulations, there are procedures in place” to deal with those violations.

Mosher, 30, made 308 successive takeoffs and landings in his Cessna 150 at Northern Maine Regional Airport, unofficially breaking the old record of 297 for a 24-hour period set in October 1999 in Australia. The pilot hopes to gain an entry in the Guinness Book of Records.

He learned last Friday, however, that because of his activity that day, complaints were made to the FAA in Portland.

“They want to pull my license, and they want to impose a stiff fine,” Mosher said Saturday during a telephone interview.

Simokoitis said Monday, however, that the FAA was investigating only the complaints it received Monday, Nov. 25, about Mosher’s activity two days before and that Mosher’s pilot’s license was not in question at this time.

He declined to give the nature of the complaints or say who made them.

Mosher said Monday that Simokoitis told him last week the FAA was considering suspending or revoking his pilot’s license because of violations of minimum weather requirements and an inadequate takeoff pattern, in this case, making a right turn after takeoff when only a left turn is allowed.

Mosher, who is not instrument rated, is licensed to fly under visual flight rules, or VFR. As such, the visibility must be one mile and the ceiling or cloud cover cannot be less than 1,000 feet.

He made his flights from Runway 28, the east-west runway that is used for VFR flights at the airport. He did not use the airport’s main runway.

The weather on the day he flew was not good, he said, and at times wind, rain and fog reduced visibility.

Mosher described the visibility conditions as marginal for VFR and denied that he made any right turns after taking off.

Greg Willard, manager at Northern Maine Regional Airport, said Monday that Mosher’s world-record attempt was not unlike what instructors and student pilots do on a regular basis when practicing takeoffs and landings. Mosher, he said, just did a lot more.

Willard said he entered a notice to airmen, or NOTAM, into the FAA system on Friday, Nov. 22, advising any pilots flying into the airport that day between 5 a.m. and 5 p.m. that there was VFR activity in the area.

“We certainly said ‘have at it,'” Willard said of Mosher’s flights. “I wished him luck in his attempt.”

Mosher said there was a representative of the FAA at the airport while he was flying and he was never told that he was violating any regulations.

The pilot, who hopes to become a flight instructor next month, said he doesn’t endorse anyone’s breaking the rules and said he was willing to accept a short suspension of his license and a reasonable fine if it is found that he did violate any flight regulations.

“They’re attacking a little pilot from Blaine, Maine, because he broke a world record, and it got a lot of publicity,” he said. “They’re making a huge deal out of this.”