West German: Y Plane Goes, Pilot Stays

A famous plane flew home to Hamburg last week, but its famous pilot was not at the controls. Mathias Rust, 19, the West German amateur pilot who landed the rented Cessna just outside Moscow’s Red Square last May, stayed behind in Lefortovo Prison awaiting assignment to a Soviet labor camp to serve his four- year sentence. The plane was flown to West Germany and transferred to its new owner, Munich Businessman Wolfgang Rudy Neumann, 51, who bought the craft from a Hamburg aviation club for $88,000.

Neumann intends to send the plane on a series of “peace flight” tours in Western Europe and the U.S. In the cabin will be two blank books, one addressed to President Reagan and the other to Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev, in which the public can write personal peace messages.