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Historic Flight Foundation planes to be sold as latest legal challenge fails

John Sessions, a Shadle Park grad, is pictured shortly before moving his Historic Flight Foundation museum with many of his vintage planes to a new hangar at Felts Field. Sessions is sitting on the wing of his Staggerwing Beechcraft Model D17s built in the 1930s. (COLIN MULVANY/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW)
By Emma Epperly emmae@spokesman.com(509) 459-5122

A Spokane judge ruled that more vintage airplanes belonging to the Historic Flight Foundation will likely have to be sold to satisfy business debts incurred by a related company in North Dakota.

Last year, a jury in Williston, North Dakota, found that flight foundation owner John Sessions and one of his companies, Eagle Crest Apartments, had fraudulently transferred funds to other businesses he owns, including the foundation. Eagle Crest defaulted on its loan held by Kansas City-based UMB Bank to build the apartments. The bank was awarded $20.1 million in March 2022.

Due to the fraudulent transfers between Sessions’ businesses, the bank was allowed to collect from those other companies owned by Sessions, according to the North Dakota judgment. Sessions appealed to the North Dakota Supreme Court but lost.

In a final attempt to spare the flight foundation and its collection of vintage airplanes that had been displayed at Felts Field from the judgment, Sessions argued that Washington’s attorney general should have been alerted that a local nonprofit was involved in the North Dakota case.

Sessions and his attorneys argued in November that the entire judgment should be thrown out as a remedy.

UMB Bank argued there was no notification requirement when the case began in 2020 and that the North Dakota court found that the foundation ignored its nonprofit legal status and was instead controlled by Sessions.

These issues should have been raised in North Dakota and not in Spokane, the bank also argued.

Spokane County Superior Court Judge Jacqueline High-Edwards agreed.

The flight foundation “read the phrase ‘as otherwise provided by law’ in the North Dakota constitution to mean any law, even a Washington statute, can restrict the North Dakota’s original jurisdiction,” High-Edwards wrote in her decision. “HFF’s argument misunderstands the reach of Washington law.”

The judge goes on to say that “it is unthinkable that any state would” allow another state or its Legislature to limit their courts’ constitutional and statutory authority to hear cases.

High-Edwards denied the flight foundation’s motion in its entirety on Thursday.

Sessions declined to comment on the ruling “because things are still in play,” he said when reached Monday .

Sessions, born and raised in Spokane and a 1971 graduate of Shadle Park High School, relocated his flight museum from Paine Field in Snohomish County to Spokane in 2019.

It’s unclear how many of the flight foundation’s planes will be sold to satisfy the judgment or if the foundation will reopen full time. It has been closed except for events at the discretion of a court-appointed receiver in charge of liquidating assets to satisfy the judgment.

A World War II-era Supermarine Spitfire used by the British Royal Air Force, which was damaged during a landing by Sessions this summer, was sold earlier this month, according to court documents. Other planes set to be sold include a 1941 Boeing A75N1 Stearman, a 1945 Piper L-4J and a 1960 deHavilland DHC-2 Mk Beaver.