KCRag Forum

moderne wrote: I remember flying on the L1011 with TWA.  Like a 747 without the upper deck.

grovester wrote: There will be a big-ass plane flying into the airport around 1:30 pm today, an L1011 from Roswell.  A new permanent fixture for the airline history museum.

loftguy wrote: Me too.  LAX to Honolulu.  It was my only 1st class flight, after accepting a bump from an earlier flight.  I've never had another air experience quite as luxurious.

Bizarre today, to think that they offered packs of a dozen or so cigarette brands.  Clouds of smoke in the isles....ummmm.

moderne wrote: I just happened to glance out the windows yesterday at my house at I-29 and 169 and the L1011 was approaching low just like all the general avaition does.

The Airline History Museum, an attraction at the Wheeler Downtown Airport for 35 years, is fighting to prevent its collection of classic airplanes from being evicted by the private operator of the city-owned facility.

The non-profit’s dispute is with Signature Flight Support, which holds the master lease with the city to run the airport. The museum has filed a lawsuit in Clay County Circuit Court, and its online petition drive has garnered 6,000 supporters.
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It was smooth flying until last year, Roper said.

That’s when Signature told the museum its lease had expired under the terms of the earlier 2000 lease. The museum protested to the city, but was told by the City Aviation Department to settle its differences with Signature.
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Roper said the lawsuit in Clay County remains active and there has been no eviction order issued. He also said an agreement approved by the city in 2010 allows the museum to occupy the space rent-free as long as it remains a non-profit.

“City ordinance demands that we get free rent and Signature signed an amendment to their master lease,” he said.

The Airline Museum currently has about 30 members. Before the Covid pandemic hit, the museum drew an average of 300- to 400 people each week. It also has helped run a Civil Air Patrol program for young people.

The cloud hanging over its lease at the downtown airport has taken its toll in terms of membership and donations, Roper said.

And while the nonprofit is considering a possible relocation, KCI and the Century Airport in Olathe have been mentioned, it would prefer to remain downtown.
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Kansas City owns the Downtown Airport. It leases the majority of its hangars to Signature Flight Support, which per the terms of a city agreement has subleased Hangar 9 to the Airline History Museum since 2000. But for the last year, Roper and his organization’s members have been locked out of their own museum by Signature. Classic pieces of American aircraft — a Lockheed Constellation, a Douglas DC-3, a Martin 404 — have sat lonely and neglected inside while a lawsuit wends its way through the courts. It is a convoluted lease dispute involving several stakeholders: the museum, Signature, city attorneys, the city’s Aviation Department and the Federal Aviation Administration. Museum leadership says Signature wants to lease the hangar to a more profitable tenant and has locked the museum out in violation of a city lease that guarantees it free rent. Signature has argued that the lease is invalid and says the museum is behind on several years’ worth of rent payments.
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Instead, Loar seemed intent on hobbling the museum, the museum leaders said. The following year — two months after the museum filed its lawsuit against Signature — Loar, as head of the Transportation, Infrastructure and Operations Committee, introduced an amendment to the museum’s lease that effectively eliminated the provision that said it didn’t have to pay rent. The council passed it, and the museum’s rent was raised to $3,300 per month. “Signature knew they were going to lose to us in court,” Quitmeier said. “So after we filed suit, they went behind our back to revoke the provision where we get free rent. They did an end around on us. And nobody notified us that the City Council was taking this up. You’d think somebody on the council would say, ‘Hey, we probably need to hear from the Airline History Museum on this. But no.”
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Roper said he didn’t want to discuss Loar’s motivations, which he said were rooted in “personal grievances.” But Quitmeier said he believed Loar harbors a grudge against the museum. “It’s my understanding that, some years ago, Teresa had a friend who wanted to park their airplane at the museum — a commercial plane, not a historical plane,” Quitmeier said. “And we said, sorry, that’s against the rules, we’re not-for-profit. And apparently that angered her.”
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