Moore said the project is estimated to take another five years and cost about $2 million to complete. He and Tyler Farmer, another certified FAA mechanic who joined the team about a year ago from Griffin Flying Service, work with a group of 14 volunteers from all walks of life to completely rebuild the plane, piece by piece.

Moore, a certified FAA mechanic who was contracted three years ago from Mendon, Michigan, to work on the plane, said it is a true 'labor of love.' For them to be able to share it with future generations is moving.' 'It touches something in them,' Moore said. These planes are so important to so many people.'ĭouglas Moore, chief mechanic on the plane project, said he's seen people come into the hangar where they are working and just cry. Even Neil Armstrong's first flight was in a Ford Tri-Motor.

'It was a lot harder for a family of six, like mine, to fly back then. 'I remember them being so stoked when they came home,' Sondles said.

Sondles remembers his older brothers' excitement when they were able to ride in a Tri-Motor to the islands for a Boy Scout Camporee in the 1960s. 'For a lot of people here, these planes were their first flights, this was their way to get to the islands,' Jeff Sondles, operations director at LAM, said. It held 10 passengers, a pilot and co-pilot and made daily journeys back and forth, transporting islanders and visitors in a golden age of commercial aviation.

PORTAGE TOWNSHIP – A northern Ohio group restoring a Ford Tri-Motor plane to flying condition hopes it will help future generations appreciate the aircraft's role in developing the Lake Erie Islands region and commercial aviation.įor the last decade, the Tri-Motor Heritage Foundation has been working to restore a 1929 B-AT-40 that flew for the Island Airlines to the Lake Erie Islands from 1946-52.

Iowa city airport ford tir-motor