Burglars at Airport Targeted Expensive Aircraft Instruments

Police here said the weekend burglary of expensive electronics equipment from a hangar at the McClellan-Palomar Airport was done by two or more thieves who knew exactly what they were looking for.

“The amount of property taken and the time leads us to believe there was more than one burglar,” Carlsbad Police Lt. Greg Fried said. “It took two or more people several hours” to get the equipment out.

And police believe that “the crooks knew what they were going after,” because a great deal of expensive equipment was taken but quite a bit was left, Fried said.

Sometime between 10 p.m. Friday and 5:30 a.m. Saturday, burglars forced open a door on the southwest side of the hangar and took navigational aids, radios and radar equipment from all or most of the 14 planes in the hangar, Fried said.

Police were told that security guards under contract from Old Dominion Inc. neither saw nor heard anything to alert them.

It wasn’t until workers arrived at 5:30 a.m. Saturday and found the hangar door partly open that airport security personnel realized someone had gotten inside the aircraft and removed equipment, Fried said.

Fried said the burglars were not necessarily highly trained people but that they had some sort of training because they knew how to carefully remove the equipment from the planes, all but two of which are corporate aircraft.

The 25,000-square-foot hangar is leased by Texas-based Cinema Air Inc., which stores executive jets and turbo-prop aircraft, said Al Waldman, director of county airports.

Fried said a 1984 Chrysler New Yorker owned by Cinema Air Inc. and stored at the hangar was also taken.

Fried said there are no leads or suspects in the case but that police will notify the aviation industry and law enforcement agencies so that they can keep an eye out for anyone trying to sell the equipment. There is a chance, however, that “they might try to sell the stuff to private individuals,” making it harder to trace, Fried said.

Authorities say they will not be able to assess the value of the equipment stolen until the owners hand in a list of what was taken and how much it was worth.

Waldman, however, said this is the largest burglary the airport has experienced.