'You can't rebuild a 206 better than this'

AOPA’s 1999 airplane, a beefed-up 1976 Cessna U206F “Aero SUV,” is currently living its best life with actor, pilot, and philanthropist Edward Norton.

Norton, who has been flying for nearly two decades, was fascinated by aviation as a child and fell in love with the idea of flying in college during a stint with the National Park Service in the Grand Canyon. “We were going in and out of backcountry strips in 206s just like this one and I thought that was the kind of flying I wanted to do,” he said. The actor, 54, is known for his roles in Fight Club, Moonrise Kingdom, and most recently Glass Onion.

While visiting family in Kenya, Norton enjoyed sitting right seat with local bush pilots in their Cessna 206s and 180 taildraggers and decided to get his private pilot certificate in 2004.

He came to own the coveted Aero SUV Sweepstakes 206 in 2006 after a lengthy search. “I really wanted to get a 206 specifically,” Norton said as he described how every day at 8:59 a.m., he would refresh the Cessna 206 page of the ASO Aircraft Sales webpage and finally discovered the newly listed AOPA Sweepstakes aircraft for sale. “I saw a new listing and it said 1976 U206F (1999 AOPA rebuild) and I thought it can’t be, it can’t be that plane, but as soon as I saw the pictures I thought, that’s it, that’s that plane.” Within one minute of the listing being posted, Norton was on the phone with the owner and arranging to come and see it. “I asked him is that really the one and I started asking him these questions, because like this is the fantasy, you can’t build a 206 better than this.”

The winner of the aircraft had ended up selling it and the next owner flew the aircraft for less than 200 hours before choosing to sell it too.

“There’s some places in the world where I’ve dropped in where the plane is more famous than I am,” Norton said of a visit to a strip in Wyoming. “I’ve seen some guy getting out of a crop duster and he looks at me and double-takes and then I think, oh, he’s a fan of this or that movie or something and then he’s come over to me and said, ‘I bet you get this all the time, but is that the AOPA Sweepstakes 206?’”

The aircraft still features the majority of AOPA’s upgrades including the interior, paint, and the iconic “AOPA AERO SUV” tail logo. Designed for backcountry adventures, the aircraft boasts a 300-horsepower Continental Platinum-series IO-550 engine, Flint Aero long-range fuel tanks, a Horton STOL kit, and three-blade McCauley propeller. Over the years, Norton has made upgrades to the avionics panel by replacing the two Garmin GNS 430 GPS/nav/coms with a GMX 200 multifunction display and GNS 530 GPS/nav/com.

Norton says he loves the backcountry recreational functionality of his Cessna 206, and it has become a perfect fit for him and his family. Norton enjoys flying his 206 around California, up to Canada, and sometimes even coast to coast.

“Flying is a privilege, it’s a really great privilege, owning a plane is an incredible privilege. And I think it’s worth observing that as someone who’s been really lucky and gotten to travel around the world and go to a lot of countries and things,” Norton said. “The United States has an extraordinary asset in its civil aviation infrastructure and in many ways you can take it for granted until you go to other places and you realize that this freedom, this permission, this system that we’re allowed to engage in, where we go to a local airport—which there are more of in the United States than any country on the planet—and get in a plane and fire it up, have shown that you know what you’re doing and be allowed to be released to head off is something that people do not enjoy in a lot of the rest of world, in most of the rest of the world. Twenty years of doing it I still kind of can’t believe I’m allowed to do it….”

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Celebrating a landmark mission

 

On Angel Flight West’s 100,000th mission, actor Edward Norton along with his friend and co-pilot Michael Langston, both newly minted Angel Flight West volunteer pilots, flew Norton’s Cessna 206 from Santa Monica Airport (SMO) to Montgomery-Gibbs Airport (MYF) in San Diego with Angel Flight patient passenger, cancer survivor, and liver transplant recipient, 12-year-old Luis Peña and his mother Maria Pérez. Angel Flight West’s network of volunteer pilots provide free medical transportation to people in need.

Luis required Angel Flight’s services when he was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 4. He eventually received a liver transplant at UCLA Healthcare and now Angel Flight West continues to fly him and his mother for post-transplant appointments. Luis, who refers to the team at Angel Flight West as his family, loves aircraft and hopes to one day become a pilot himself.

The 206 made quick work of the flight from Santa Monica to San Diego as we traveled at 130 knots over the ocean along the California coast. Norton and Langston, who flies Norton’s 206 about as much as Norton does, were fantastic pilots and tour guides, pointing out a spectacular superpod of dolphins and other landmarks seen along the way.

“It’s really cool listening to what everyone here is saying about this organization and it makes me only regret that I didn’t know more about it sooner, and I think that the mission of amplifying what you guys are doing and getting more people involved is a really worthy one and I’m really happy to lean into that with you,” Norton said at the Angel Flight West press conference prior to the flight.
—NB

angelflightwest.org