Remember the 7 yr old girl who flew solo in a plane. She crashed it and died. What are these parents thinking? You are right. Its just plain insane.
I had completely forgot about that one.
Let’s put the story out correctly: Jessica Dubroff was 7 when she attempted a cross-country flight. During her quest to become the youngest pilot to fly across America - she was killed WITH her father and flight instructor, when her light plane crashed in a storm in Cheyenne, Wyoming, 11 April 1996.
She wasn’t flying solo. Her parents probably pushed her on this “grand adventure” (even though the Guiness Book of Records stopped taking entries for youngest aviator - afraid that what happened would happen). The parents probably pushed this on her, more for their own benefit than hers. (FAA won’t permit someone so young to actually fly - so the scam was that the kid was a passenger at the controls!! She could not fly solo.) But ...in this case - the father died (as did the flight instuctor) - with the kid - because of their stupidity!!
“Remember the 7 yr old girl who flew solo in a plane?”
I could never understand the purpose of that one either except to be considered a celebrity and make the round of talk shows...her father and flight instructor were with her...duh!
Check this out..
“Her mother, Lisa Hathaway, told the San Francisco Examiner last month that she had decided not to send Jessica or her two siblings - brother Joshua, 9, and sister Jasmine, 3 - to school and not to home-school them either. “They’re getting a tremendous education from having their lives be in the real world,” Hathaway told the Examiner.”
http://tech.mit.edu/V116/N18/pilot.18w.html
That girl was not in control of the plane - i.e. she was not the pilot in command. She sat in the left seat, took control of the plane once it was in the air but she didn’t do any takeoff’s or landings ... it was the pilot instructor that made the decision to take off that day and he was at the controls. Nor was she a pilot. She couldn’t be until she was 17.