K.C. looking to display old plane in airport garage

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The city is looking for a place to display an old aircraft thought to be one of the first planes built for leisure flying.

The disassembled American Eaglet now sits behind a partition at the Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport's maintenance garage.

"It is part of Kansas City history," said Councilman Bill Skaggs, who is the chairman of the council's Aviation Committee. "It was manufactured here, and it needs to be brought out and put on display."

The plane was made by American Eagle Aircraft Corp., which promoted it as "the world's first featherweight airplane" and "Mr. Average Man's Airplane."

"This is the Model T of aviation," said Dan Orr, the airport's maintenance supervisor.

The American Eaglet, which sold for less than $1,000 and could reach up to 60 mph, weighs about 625 pounds and has a three-cylinder, 30-horsepower engine.

The blue two-seater, built in 1930 at the old Fairfax Airport in Kansas City, Kan., was damaged in a Syracuse, N.Y., crash shortly after it was bought. Decades later, retired American Airlines pilot Gene Morris found it on the roof of a Montana farmer's chicken coop and restored it. He gave it to Kansas City in 1991.

Airport director Mike Roper said Morris required that the plane be displayed in a public place. It also must be kept inside.

During the 1990s, the plane was displayed in the Wheeler Downtown Airport's rotunda, but the city removed it in 2000 to make way for an expansion of one of its tenants.

"We have no [public] facility here that is large enough to hold it," Roper said.

Morris, 77, of Roanoke, Texas, said he has considered trying to get the plane back because it is not on display.

One possibility is to display it in Kansas City's Union Station, something Morris said would satisfy him.

"A museum is where it belongs," Morris said.

Andi Udris, president and chief executive officer of Union Station, said the aircraft could be displayed in the lower-level lobby in front of the facility's IMAX theater.

However, officials don't yet know if the building's structure would support the plane's weight and dimensions.

"There is no question that with all the different kinds of transportation and technology we are trying to show here, this would be another fine acquisition," Udris said.

Union Station's Science City museum has a Butler Blackhawk biplane, which Kansas City-based Butler Manufacturing Inc. built at Wheeler Downtown Airport around the same time as the American Eaglet. But the American Eaglet could not be displayed in Science City because people have to pay to enter the museum, Roper said.

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Information from: The Kansas City Star, http://www.kcstar.com