Picture this—guests in tuxedos sip champagne inside a private hangar while valets park Ferraris and Bentleys around a Gulfstream jet as part of the display. The setup? Impeccable. The disaster? Unforgettable. One valet—trying to squeeze a luxury car into the perfect spot—drove straight into the plane’s wing.
“All of a sudden I hear boom. I turn around, and there’s a car wedged under the wing of the Gulfstream jet.” That’s how Alex Farrington, owner of Prestige Valet Services, described the moment chaos erupted.
Guests poured out of the hangar—waitstaff, valets, and VIPs in black-tie attire. People snapped photos. Managers barked orders. And Alex stood there, staring at the mess. “Everybody comes running out of the hangar, and I am baffled—what in the world just happened?”
First thing’s first, check on his employee. Alex said, “I can’t find the valet. The valet’s back behind a car crying because she didn’t realize what she did.”
Then, the guesses started flying. Alex heard one guest say, “You hit a ten-million-dollar jet.” Someone else corrected them—“No, it’s actually a forty-million-dollar jet.” That’s when reality caught up with him. He said, “Like it matters, my insurance is capped at five million. I’m in trouble.”
But things only got worse when the authorities showed up.
“The federal police get pulled out, the local police get called out, because they don’t know how to handle this incident—because obviously this is the first time anything like this has happened.” No one knew who had jurisdiction over a valet in someone else’s car hitting a plane on private property—but still technically on airport grounds. Meanwhile Alex wondered if his business would survive.
The fallout of crashing into a Gulfstream jet
By the next morning, Alex was in a conference room with the hangar owner, insurance adjusters, and airport officials. The damage report didn’t look good. “The plane rents out for $4,000 an hour,” he said, “and it’s grounded.”
He braced for the worst. If the jet missed even one charter flight, the lost revenue could have cost hundreds of thousands. But there was a glimmer of hope. “Luckily, there was nothing on the books for three weeks.”
The repair estimates piled up. “The car takes the brunt of the damage, knocks out the A-pillar. A-pillar’s cracked, and the plane has surface scratches.”
But Alex was blessed with one miracle: The wing didn’t break, it flexed. “Luckily, when this person hit the plane…the wing flexed up.” That flexibility saved the heating elements and avionics. “If they hit the front, it would have hit the heating elements. If it hit the rear, it would hit the avionics. That would have been a half a million dollars—no questions asked.”
Instead? “Luckily, it flexed up—everything said and done, cost me about six thousand dollars, and we were good to go.” Alex eventually dodged disaster. But in the moment, surrounded by cops, grounded jets, and panicked guests, he may not have been so sure things would work out.
Watch Alex Farrington’s full story below:
