A cautionary word about aircraft finance and the Florida coke plane theories

[HamdenRice]

In one of my many somewhat strange career ricochets, I at one time worked at a financial company that did a fair amount of aircraft finance structuring. I became very familiar with how airplanes are purchased and how the financing is arranged.

This is not to cast doubt on any of the Florida coke plane theories, but more like an addition or cautionary angle that should be taken into account.

Airplanes are very expensive pieces of equipment. But because they are expensive equipment, they provide very big tax benefits in the form of depreciation deductions. The problem is that most airlines and air transport companies do not generate enough profits to use all the depreciation deductions. It's not that the airlines or air transport companies are not profitable; it's just that the biggest asset they use, the planes, are monstrously expensive and therefore generate truly gigantic depreciations deductions that are often more than the profits, with the result that an airline that owns its own planes ends up with "unused" tax benefits.

So, in a typical legal, but kind of tax-unfair transaction, airlines and air transport companies purchase planes, then immediately sell them to corporations with big profits or wealthy individuals -- entities who have a big "appetite" for depreciation deductions -- and then lease the plane back. This is called an airplane sale-leaseback.

The airline or air transport company agrees to perform all the maintence and operations, etc. The "owner" has no function whatsoever except to hold title and take the tax deductions.

There may be, but there does not have to be, any close or operating connection between a company that owns an aircraft and the company that operates it. You can test this idea next time you fly somewhere. As you get on the plane, at the front on the inside, you may note a little metal plate about the size of an auto license plate that identify the owner of the plane. It's interesting to note who actually owns the plane you are flying in.

A lot of planes that are flown by US airlines are owned by very big, very profitable companies like GE that have nothing to do with aviation. Airlines and air transport companies generally do not own the planes they fly for tax reasons.

But more importantly, it is difficult to show any operational relationship between an airline and the purchaser of a particular airplane. Similarly, showing that A purchased a plane from B may mean nothing more than that A's tax attorneys got in touch with B's tax attorneys to arrange a mutually profitable, but purely paper, transaction that has nothing to do with whoever is actually operating and flying the plane.

Just something that's been bothering me about the way this story is analyzed. I really need to re-read all that stuff trying to understand whether the transactions are "real" or "tax driven."

[spooked911]

1. Coke plane stories are essentially limited hangouts that buttress the official 9/11

hijacker story, and to me, are disinfo.

[DoYouEverWonder]

2. Especially now

that the people who are creating these stories, have come out dissing any CTer who looks at the physical evidence.

I wonder whatever happened to the 100's of Saudis who were supposedly taking flying lessons over FL before 9-11?

[DrDebug]

3. Straw man argument

Just read the story and see how get those airplanes with the Titan / Lantax / DuPont investment deal. That was creating an airplane out of thin air. The CIA simply moves airplanes from one front to another and if you bother to check all those airplanes who see them moving back and forth in an endless merry-go-round behind the different front. Neither of which can afford an airplane and they all seem to collapse after all a couple of years. And if look at the CIA rendition flight story, you'll notice that it is 100s of planes working for dozens of companies and all those planes go back and forth because that's the way to confuse and hide the identity of the intelligence organization behind it.

That is what those flight school were about and the mentioning in the OCT was because they needed to get rid off some people and those arabs were easy patsies. Simply by proving that the flight school were CIA fronts for drug import, proves that the OCT is a lie and a coverup for other illegal activities.

[rman]

4. There's close enough a financial connection between the operator and the financier

for this connection to be interesting.

You know how it is: "follow the money".

[mirandapriestly]

5. I think there is something going on with the flight schools

I was looking into it for awhile and there were a lot of affiliations, for example, the distant cousin Wirt Walker and the school in Oklahoma. I can't remember now, and no one was very interested at the time, but there was an article in a right wing rag trying to tie those planes to Chavez in Venezuela rather than having originated on the other end and insinuating he was behind the drug running, but I never could really put anything together.