Marriages are made in fuselage wrecks as well

They say marriages are made in heaven.. and sometimes in wrecked fuselages as well.. Read on to find out ….

By James Richard Covington
The Douglas Aircraft Company constructed a DC-9-32 series aircraft with serial number 47442, line number 524 on July 11, 1969 and registered it N1797U. This aircraft was then delivered on August 24, 1970 to THY (Turk Hava Yollari) Turkish Airlines and named “Akdeniz.” It was registered TC-JAG. Valujet then purchased the aircraft on March 17, 1995 and re-registered it to N938VV on April 17, 1995. Valujet then changed its name to AirTran Airlines, and eventually the aircraft was re-registered by AirTran as N838AT on December 10, 1998.

This proud bird flew for a couple of more years when something went tragically wrong on August 8, 2000. AirTran Airways flight 913 en route from Greensboro to Atlanta executed an emergency landing in Greensboro shortly after declaring an emergency due to an in-flight fire and smoke in the cockpit. Fortunately everyone on board escaped serious injury during the evacuation, but sadly, the aircraft sustained substantial fire, heat, and smoke damage and had to be written off. I photographed this aircraft, already in different pieces, in November 2002. The first photo was taken of the rear section of the fuselage, with the registration being covered by tape.

In the remark section of the upload, I asked for help in identifying the aircraft because I had no idea what the registration was! There was no record trail of N838AT after it was written off at Greensboro, so I had no idea that this was indeed that aircraft… well, not yet anyway… I received several emails from devoted Airliners.net visitors trying to assist me in my quest to identify this mystery bird at Maxton, including one from a female Airliners.net enthusiast. Elisabeth emailed me in September 2004 with very detailed research about the possible identity of this aircraft… I was shocked that anyone, especially a female, would go to all this trouble and take the time and effort to send me a long and detailed email regarding a scrapped aircraft. I knew this girl was special! An aviation geek like me, and a female as well! We kept in touch via email for a while and exchanged photos, then began chatting over the Internet. I finally called her in November 2004, and she invited me out to visit her in December (she lived in North Carolina at the time, and I lived in Arizona). We started dating after my visit and I commuted from Arizona to North Carolina every other weekend for 7 months!

By June 2005, I was ready to make a commitment to Elisabeth, so I decided to propose to her on June 5th (her birthday!), and knew I had to do it in a special location. I decided to propose INSIDE the hulk of the aircraft that she had emailed me about!

Fortunately, the aircraft at this location were freely accessible, and we both enjoy venturing into aircraft that are being dismantled (we had visited and ventured inside this particular aircraft on previous occasions), so Elisabeth thought this was “just another visit” to our original aircraft. So it was quite a surprise to her when I got down to one knee and proposed to her!! She immediately said yes, and we continued with our tour of the aircraft… Since it was her birthday as well, we went back to the car and got the birthday cake and bottle of champagne I had hidden in the trunk, and enjoyed them both inside the plane!

Elisabeth and I were married in Hawaii in October 2005, and are living a nice life in sunny Arizona. We both still visit Airliners.net quite often, and we both will always have a special place in our hearts for this very special website which ultimately brought us together for a lifetime… So, yes folks… I met my wife on Airliners.net! The best website in the world!!

I do not live in a fools paradise but then stuff like this makes you wanna start believeing in it !!