Border-Crashing Canadian Pilot Loses Plane

A Canadian pilot begged an Ohio court to give him more jail time rather than take away his beloved Cessna 172 but the presiding judge turned the aircraft over to the federal government and set 26-year-old Ryan Brandt, of North Bay, Ontario, free. Brandt had earlier pleaded guilty to trying to smuggle a Canadian woman across the Canada-U.S. border in the aircraft and had spent more than six months in jail while the process wound its way through the courts. U.S. District Court Judge Jack Zouhary sentenced him to time served and forfeiture of the plane, a 1975 M model for which Brandt had recently paid $43,000 CAD. The judge said Brandt was lucky to have lost only the plane for the reckless incident, noting a much harsher reception could have been waiting on the other side of the border. "The world changed after 9/ 11, and what might have been seen in the past as a minor indiscretion is not so anymore because of the world we live in," Zouhary told Brandt, according to the Toledo Blade's accountof the proceedings. Brandt reportedly tried to bargain with the judge, offering to stay in jail, despite assaults and threats from other inmates, if he could keep the plane, but Zouhary told him it doesn't work that way.

Brandt took off from Windsor Airport, just across the border from Detroit, and flew Kathryn Adamson, 62, a Canadian who had been barred from the U.S. for overstaying her visa, to Ottawa-Erie Airport in Port Clinton, Ohio, about 60 miles away. The aircraft was met by customs agents and Brandt admitted to flying at low altitude to avoid radar detection. It's not clear what tipped the customs agents. For her part, Adamson told the agents she wanted to see her boyfriend in Tampa, Florida. She was given a $700 fine and sent back to Canada in January on charges of illegal entry to the U.S. Brandt also got the $700 fine but his role prompted a longer list of charges that resulted in the mandatory forfeiture of the aircraft. Brandt told the court he had no idea of the seriousness of his crimes. "If I would have known how serious the consequences would have been, I would have never even thought of flying here," the Toledo Blade reported Brandt as saying. "I've lost nearly everything I care about over this mistake." Unfortunately for Brandt's mother, however, it's she who will actually pay for his "mistake." Katherine Brandt told CBC Newsshe took a line of credit out against her house to finance the purchase of the plane for her son.