He loves to fly, and this blows.
John Travolta has sued the owners of the Florida airport where he's looking to land his jumbo jet, claiming that they falsified their 2006 records to show that the landing field could not accommodate large planes. (View the lawsuit.)
The Pulp Fiction star owns several aircraft, including a Boeing 707, a four-engine Qantas commercial passenger jet that Travolta now uses to act as a goodwill ambassador for the Australian airline wherever he flies.
Travolta claims that he has continually used the runway adjacent to his $8 million spread within the Jumbolair Aviation Estates complex in Ocala—which boasts the largest paved, private airfield in the country—without incident, and that he was assured when he bought land there in 2001 that he would be allowed to use the nearby Greystone Airport.
The part-time pilot alleges that Greystone owners James and Christine Garemore doctored the airport master record to prevent Travolta from landing his jet and to "wreak financial harm" on Jumbolair by forcing a lawsuit against the complex owners.
"Mr. Travolta has been severely mistreated as a consequence of these acts and intends to vigorously pursue all appropriate legal recourse against these responsible parties," the former Oscar nominee's attorney, Michael Ossi, said in a statement.
Corporations Jett Clipper Johnny and Constellation Productions and two trustees from Hawker Investment Trust, which holds the title to Travolta's nine-acre estate, are seeking an injunction that would require the Garemores to scrap the allegedly redrawn guidelines and start operating according to Greystone's previous rules.
"At no time during the construction of the aviation-themed residence did the Defendants (or Jumbolair) inform the Plaintiffs…that their rights to use the New Runway had been diminished or otherwise altered," states the lawsuit, which was filed Thursday in federal court.
"The Defendants were fully aware that the sole purpose for Hawker acquiring the Hawker property and building the aviation-themed residence…was to accommodate the Plaintiff's use of the aircraft."
The plaintiffs are also requesting that the Garemores' report, which states that heavier planes "may cause immediate structural damage," be withdrawn to prevent "future baseless filings," because it provided false, misleading info to the Federal Aviation Administration.
An FAA spokeswoman told reporters that the agency is not involved in the complaint.
Todd Hopson, the Garemores' attorney, told the Ocala Star-Banner last week that, while Travolta has, in fact, been using the airport, the 7,550-foot main runway is no longer suitable for heavy aircraft.
"The runway doesn't meet the requirements," Hopson said. "Twenty years has changed it. The runway has basically deteriorated over the years."
Greystone was established in 1981 and a 1989 agreement between James Garemore and Jumbolair founder Arthur Jones set up the current arrangement.
Garemore told the Star-Banner that, while the runway was originally built to accommodate Jones' 707, Jones did not touch down as frequently as Travolta.
"The bottom line of this whole thing is, it's a safety issue," he said. "The runway is not designed for a 707."
Also at issue is the fate of Travolta's latest film, the big-screen adaptation of the Tony-winning musical Hairspray, which was itself an adaptation of the John Waters-directed cult favorite.
The movie, in which Travolta fat-suits up as Tracy Turnblad's mother, Edna, opened today to generally good-to-excellent reviews, with Los Angeles Times film critic Carina Chocano calling it "happy, healthy and attractive" and the Washington Post's Peter Marks writing that, "when Hairspray is twisting and shouting and swiveling its hips, you can even dare to believe that a great society is waiting in the wings."