Iron Man destroys Marble Falls police chief’s lost plane along with dream of owning it again

Marble Falls Police Chief Glenn Hanson has beef with Iron Man.

“Iron Man blew up my plane,” he said.

Hanson recently discovered that the popular crime-fighting vigilante, played by Robert Downey Jr., destroyed his first-ever airplane during filming of the 2016 Marvel movie “Captain America: Civil War.” 

“I have a bone to pick with Iron Man,” said Hanson when he found out this past June.

The beloved plane was a 1966 Cessna 150 that Hanson purchased when he was 19. He had to sell it a few years later but tried to keep track of it.

“I’ve always held out and had this little dream that I’d find it and buy it back,” he said. “That’s not going to happen now.”

During a routine check with the Federal Aviation Administration’s public database of registered planes, he noticed something odd: The Cessna 150 had been deregistered. 

Curious, the police chief put on his detective cap and did some digging.

“I looked up the registration on it and got the gentleman’s (owner’s) name off of it and found out it was in Castroville,” Hanson said.

He then turned to Google, looked up the man’s name, and found a phone number attached to an auto parts store.

“I cold-called him and asked if he was the guy who owned my airplane,” Hanson said. “He said, ‘Yeah, that’s me.’”

Hanson wasn’t prepared for what he learned next.  

“I told him that I’d like to see it,” he said. “He said, ‘Oh, you can see it, but you’ll have to rent ‘Captain America: Civil War’ because it got blown up in that movie.’”

The police chief witnessed the plane’s demise in a YouTube clip.

“I found the scene, and sure enough, there’s my little airplane sitting on a ramp with a couple of others,” Hanson said. “I’m not into the Marvel Comics, but I know it was Iron Man that blew up my plane.”

Watching the Cessna go up in smoke brought back a flood of memories from when Hanson first solo piloted it as a 16-year-old.

“It was one of the greatest senses of accomplishment I’ve felt in my life, especially as a young person,” he said. “I put in the effort, time, work, and my own money to get to that point.”

Hanson traces his love of aviation to his father’s service as a bomber crewman during World War II.

“I grew up listening to his stories,” he said.  

The chief fondly remembers his first time in the air, a gift from his next-door neighbor, another World War II veteran and fighter pilot.

“For my seventh birthday, he took me flying in a Learjet,” Hanson said.

The young man had a short list of flyover spots on his birthday plane ride.

“The two things I wanted to see were my house and Texas Stadium,” he said. “I did that and decided that (flying) was what I wanted to do when I grew up.”

He sought out ways to be involved in aviation, paying for his own flight lessons at Addison Airport near Dallas when he was 15 years old.

“I worked summer jobs and saved the money and would take flying lessons,” he said. 

Many of those lessons were in the Cessna 150, which at the time was owned by the airfield. When it was sold to someone in Mineral Springs in 1985, Hanson began a persistent pursuit to convince the plane’s owner to hand over the keys for $6,500.

“I bugged that guy for months until he finally shut me up by selling me the airplane,” he said. “As a 19-year-old, I paid less in insurance for my airplane than I did for liability insurance for my Pontiac Firebird.”

Hanson sold the plane in March 1988 to a man in San Antonio, which began the chain reaction that eventually led to its fiery end in a major motion picture.

“I was still in college, and I took it out for flying, and it caught on fire,” he said. “Fortunately, I was still near the airport and was able to land. The mechanic took it apart to see what the deal was, and it was just going to cost more money to fix it than I could afford at the time.”

The sale grounded Hanson’s dream of becoming a professional aviator.

“I never grew up as a little kid with a dream to be a cop or a fireman,” he said. “I always wanted to be a military aviator. It just never worked out.”

A “glut of pilots” at the time added to Hanson’s decision to exit the field for good.

“There were still plenty of Vietnam veterans who were taking those pilot positions,” he said. “There just weren’t a whole lot of jobs.”

While Hanson can’t bring his Cessna 150 back to life, he was able to purchase the plane’s registration number, N8881S, for safekeeping.

“It’s of sentimental value to me,” he said. “Every year, I have to pay a fee to keep it until I put it on another airplane.”

Hanson is unsure about his flying future because of the rigorous medical requirements for aviators.

“When I was 16 and young and healthy, it was basically a doctor’s visit,” he said. “Here at 58, I’m old, fat, and not as healthy, there’s more expense.”

Hanson said he will forever cherish the moments he spent with his 1966 Cessna 150. He even has a model of it in his office. 

“If I don’t ever get to fly again, I’ll be disappointed, but I thoroughly enjoyed the time I got to spend in the air, especially with that plane,” he said.

Listen to a KBEY 103.9 FM Radio Picayune interview with Chief Hanson as he talks about his plane and “beef” with Iron Man.

nathan@thepicayune.com