For most aircraft owners, learning the engine of your plane is making metal would be very bad news. But for Jay and Mary Honeck, it turned out to be a good thing, because it led them to a new career as innkeepers of what may be the only aviation-themed bed and breakfast in the Midwest.

"The guy that owned the hangar next to the shop where our engine was being worked on owned the Alexis Park Inn," Jay Honeck explained. "He kept coming over to the shop and we struck up a friendship with him."

Honeck and his wife, both pilots, started dreaming about what could be done with lodging so close to an airport. The inn is at the arrival end of runway 25 at Iowa Municipal Airport (IOW), the oldest airport west of the Mississippi. The obvious answer was to create an inn with an aviation theme.

"We were giving him all these suggestions about what to do with the place, but really he just bought it as an investment. He'd owned it about 20 years," Honeck recalls. "It took about eight weeks for us to go from talking to him about doing an aviation theme to us realizing that we wanted to do it."

After 22 years in the newspaper distribution business, the Honecks sold their company last summer and bought the inn. They spent the next seven months remodeling it, spending a lot of time finding the appropriate decorations for their theme suites.

"I think every pilot at the airport cleaned the junk out of his hangar for us," Honeck laughed. "We had things like props, cylinders, that kind of thing, but our first big shopping spree was at Oshkosh."

The Honecks flew their Piper Pathfinder to the show. Realizing this would limit the size and scope of their shopping trip, they recruited some friends to drive their van there.

"We knew the first suites would have to be the Wright brothers suite and then the Lindbergh suite," Honeck says. "We parked the van in the Wal-Mart parking lot across from the back 40 at Oshkosh and spent the day filling up our shopping cart with anything that had to do with the Wrights or Lindbergh. At the end of the day we went through the fence to put all the stuff into the van."

The Honecks gathered photographs and artwork in addition to aircraft parts to decorate their new establishment.

"We try to decorate the suites to match the era," he continued. "The Wright's suite is done in an early 20th century motif, it's almost Victorian decor. The Lindbergh suite has a 1920s look to it."

The suites consist of bedrooms (up to three), a kitchen area and living room. There are Jacuzzis in the bathrooms, the exception being the Honeymoon Suite, which is done up in a Pan Am Clipper/south seas motif.

"That one has the Jacuzzi in the bedroom. It also has a waterbed. It's the most popular suite with our female customers," Honeck noted.

When it came time to decorate a suite circa the 1940s, the couple selected the name Memphis Belle after the B-17 made famous as the first to complete 25 missions during World War II.

They were surprised when Linda Morgan, wife of the Belle's pilot, Col. Bob Morgan, telephoned one day because she had heard about the suite named in honor of her husband's plane.

"She was very flattered," Honeck remembered. A few weeks later a pair of photographs of the Memphis Belle and its crew signed by Col. Morgan arrived. A limited edition print of the plane followed later. "That print has been framed and now hangs over the bed," says Honeck.

Other themes include the Earhart, Reno Air Races, Stearman, Oshkosh, Staggerwing, Apollo, and Iowa City suites. There are 30 suites in the two buildings that make up the inn.

If the décor of the place doesn't get you, the hospitality might. The Honecks see that breakfast baskets are delivered to the suite door each morning. And in each suite, guests will find a complimentary copy of General Aviation News.

Now that's service!