Group restoring plane that flew Lake Erie Islands

Associated Press

PORT CLINTON, Ohio

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.

The Tri-Motor Heritage Foundation has been working for a decade to restore a 1929 B-AT-40 that flew for Island Airlines to the Lake Erie Islands from 1946 to 1952. It held 10 passengers, a pilot and co-pilot and made daily trips, transporting islanders and visitors.

“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 the Liberty Aviation Museum in Port Clinton, where the aircraft is being restored.

The project is expected to take five more years and $2 million to complete, according to chief mechanic Douglas Moore.

Moore and another mechanic have been working with 14 volunteers on the project that means a lot to people, Moore told the Port Clinton News-Herald.

Some have even cried upon entering the hangar where the plane is being restored, Moore said.

“It touches something in them,” he said.

Volunteers do a variety of jobs, including crimping sheets of metal and bending them to the correct shape before riveting them onto the new frame.