Wayne Newton's Plane Left To Gather Dust In A Michigan Airport

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Feb 4th 2010 at 12:01AM

He may be Mr. Las Vegas but that's not where his plane is located. Wayne Newton's private plane has been sitting at an airport in Michigan for the past three years and according to local reports he hasn't been paying his storage bills. The president of Oakland Air in Oakland County, Michigan says that he is owed $61,360 in storage fees. The plane has been for sale for several years. Oakland Air president Joe Borgesen told MLive.com that a potential buyer came to check out the plane a while ago but that found that the unmaintained plane was full of black mold. The Fokker F28-1000 which was built in 1969 was once valued at over $2 million but is now said to be only good for scrap.

UPDATE: TMZ spoke with Wayne Newton's representative who said that that Newton has spent more than $700,000 in repairs to repair the plane and it still doesn't work.

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Tags: fokker plane, FokkerPlane, mr las vegas, MrLasVegas, plane, wayne newton, WayneNewton

Filed under: Wings, Celebrity Shopping

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Tim Haight Feb 4th 2010 3:20PM

I used to work for Wayne, and his not paying his bills is nothing new, I had to take him to the labor board to get my last pay check. His aircraft was beautiful when I quit working for him because he refused to do maintanence and use qualified people for flight planning. Wayne is a stand up guy but unfortunitly his better half is the one who wears the pants in the family. Her bad decissions lead not only myself but others to render our resignations rather than face legal ramifications from the FAA due to them not maintaining his aircraft. I like Wayne, as I said he is a stand up guy, but he really needs to start making his own decissions and stop letting the few people who do anything they say run his affairs.

lamlin229 Feb 4th 2010 5:13PM

hey tim, not to change the subject but, does wayne still have his arab horses? 3 years ago i bought a 1/2 arab, 1/2 pinto filly from a girl 2 hours north of columbus ohio. i found out that her grandfather was owned by wayne and he was used as a trick horse in his vegas shows. did you work for him at that time?

Frank ODonnell Feb 4th 2010 3:28PM

The airplane bug is dangerous to company or personal finances. If you buy a
defective or damaged aircraft (basket case ?) it can cost you your assets and
your marriage. Airplanes only pay if they are used all the time and this
explains why some are simply used up. Aircraft mechanics know how risky
it is to buy the wrong plane and then try to rescue a bad mistake. Wayne
is or was involved in one of these incidents and I hope he is comes out on the
break even side of his experience since he is, Wayne Newton !

al schrader Feb 4th 2010 5:20PM

Didn't Elvis have a plane ? It's part of Graceland now. I wanna go to Wayne Newton Land just outside Vegas and see Wayne's Planes. I'd pay $5.00 admission especially to see some of Wayne's collection of collectibles (junk).

Al-

Tim Haight Feb 4th 2010 6:13PM

As far as I know he does, his horses mean more than just about anything to him so I doubt he has stopped working with them.

Tim Haight Feb 4th 2010 6:25PM

Waynes aircraft was the BEST F-28 in the world a few years ago, it was and probably still is the lowest time F-28 in the world. The maintenance was impecable up to the time I quit working for him. The problum is that it is to noisy to land at most US airports now, and due to the size of the aircraft it has to be maintained to the same standards as an airliner. Wayne just could not afford to do that. His decissions to hire people who were not top notch or met the requirments just was the iceing on the cake and killed a prefically good aircraft. I have flow over 3000 hrs in that aircraft and its a wonderful plane, safe, and as long as it is maintained, reliable. I would be more than willing to get it back on track for Wayne, but after sitting in Mich. in the snow and humidity, I am sure it is in pretty bad shape at this point. I would have hoped Wayne would have learned his lesson from his previous aircraft that was left to rot in Houston, but I guess not. I wish him and his plane the best.

Stan Feb 4th 2010 7:50PM

Hey Tim,

You don't know me but I think you know my good friend Tim Lewis. I used to fly that airplane for Novel out of SLC before Wayne bought it. Novel sold it becuse they did not want to cough up the estimated 1 Mil. to do the C inspection.

Do you know why this plane was parked in a crappy place like it is , instead of a nice dry place like Vegas?

Scott Feb 6th 2010 9:11AM

That A/C has been sitting at that airport for nearly 6 years. When the interior re-furbish was done he never paid. It sat for so long untill it went up for auction. Someone from his "camp" paid $50,000 on the bill and it sat for a little while longer. The maintenance part never got done due to him not paying for the interior bill. The company that did the interior and that was supposed to due the maintenance on the A/C is a top notch company for interior, maintenance and avionics. They are a certified repair station for Fokker f-28's. They have re-furbished many other high profile customer A/C. The engines on that A/C are timed out and the fuel bladders in the wings are rotted. I'm pretty sure that $700,000 he was paying was just for the full interior re-furbish. Maybe he should not have bought a Airplane that is so expensive to own.

Tim Haight Feb 4th 2010 9:54PM

I think Wayne was trying to get the aircraft on a charter cert with the company that used to fly Dow Corning workers down to Houston. When I left his employ the feds pulled his certificate because he did not have a qualified DO or DM to run the aircraft. I think the deal for the charter cert did not work out and he had the aircraft there for avionics that were required. I am guessing he did not have that amount of money so there it sits.

Tim Haight Feb 6th 2010 12:27PM

This aircraft had 2 O/H engines that had about 3000 hrs left on them before major. The paint and interior were done in Mena, so I doubt it was there for interior work. He never wanted to keep up with the maint program the aircraft was on so there it sits. A once beeautiful aircraft now nothing more then scrap metal.