15 year old girl flies coast to coast... as the pilot

[BrianGMFS]

http://www.parentdish.com/2009/07/13/high-flying-adored-15-year-old-girl-pilots-a-plane-coast-to-co/?icid=webmail

Brian

[cotejy]

Anyadike learned to fly both an airplane and a helicopter at Tomorrow's Aeronautical Museum in Compton in an after-school program that offers aviation lessons to underprivileged and at-risk youth.

Wow, what a nice program! I can't see a better way of interesting at-risk youth. 15 and both airplane and helicopter pilot! On the other hand, what an expensive program! Who pay for that?

[Rooster Cruiser]

<sigh>  Here we go again...

I'm not meaning to rain on the young girl's parade, but US FAA regulations are pretty clear about who is Pilot In Command of an airplane.  I'm not going to quote all the pertinent regs here, but in order to act as Pilot In Command of an airplane you must be at least 16 years of age.  In order to carry passengers, you must hold at least a Private Pilot certificate and the minimum age to acquire one is 17.  The bottom line:  The 87 year old instructor in the right seat of that airplane was the actual pilot in the eyes of the law.

There was a rash of young kids back in the 80's and 90's whose parents would find sponsors to do such stuff as fly across the USA, fly across the Atlantic to re-create Lindberg's flight, etc.  It came to an abrupt end in 1996 when 7 year old Jessica Dubroff and CFI Joe Reid died during a takeoff accident in Cheyenne WY.  Jessica was attempting to become the "Youngest Pilot" to ever fly across the USA.  After that, the press and the public took a pretty dim view of such antics.
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/04/14/weekinreview/april-7-13-a-small-pilot-dies.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

I guess enough time has passed that a new crop of cub reporters, ignorant of their history, will report glowingly again on publicity stunts like this.  Nice to raise publicity for this program, but lets keep things in perspective regarding who was the actual pilot of that airplane.

RC

[spacer]

Apart from the legal differences some may hold regarding the flight, I like that folks are getting young folks into flying.
I met her at KLIT a few days ago, as I happened to be having lunch at the airport when they landed their 172 (Ol' Cowley)
there.

She wasn't in the front of the airplane, and it wasn't until the news photographer arrived that they went back out for the photo
op of her in (and getting out of) the left seat.
On asking about it, I was told that the newsmaking flight had been accomplished already, and that they were merely taking turns
on the flight back.

I remember other stories regarding flying youth from the same outfit in California, and I'm pretty impressed given that many of these
young pilots are flying fixed wing airplanes *and* helicopters. Hell... I'll be 39 next week and I'm still working on my PPSEL.