Question for all you plane buff's.

[Dave]

At the Kalamazoo Air Museum they have a couple home builts, one is a "midget" Coursar FU-4 (or F4U?). All the engines are missing, removed by the builder, because of liability issues. Sign says builders are responsible, no matter who is flying it and even after it is sold or given away.

Information

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[John Holbrook]

As a former military flyer, there is an old axiom in military aviation:

The three most useless things to a flyer are:

The runway behind you!

The altitude above you!

And the fuel that you just dumped!

PS, to a carrier aviator, when you are coming aboard a carrier, there are only two places you can wind up, and one of them is REAL BAD!

[MarkB]

Sign says builders are responsible, no matter who is flying it and even after it is sold or given away.

More than likely the builder realized his design was unsafe. Hundreds of used homebuilts are traded every year. But there is a gotcha with product liability: You can always get a buyer (or passenger) to sign a waiver of liability, but an individual cannot sign away the rights of his heirs to sue. Since an airplane crash is very likely to be fatal, there's always a risk that the buyer's heirs will try to sue the builder if the buyer is killed in an accident.