Jessica Dubroff: FLY TILL I DIE

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Instead of a bogus record that inevitably would have been challenged by a still younger child (the Guinness Book of Records officially discontinued its Youngest Pilot categories in 1989, fearing accidents), Americans have a macabre photo album of little Jessica. A mini-Amelia Earhart, in a leather bomber jacket and riding pants. A plucky, pug-nosed girl in a baseball cap who seemed more at home on one of her beloved ponies than in a plane.

Jessica's quest to become the youngest person to fly across the continent began last Wednesday in Half Moon Bay, California. She was to fly east in three legs, laying over in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Fort Wayne, Indiana, before finally reaching Falmouth, Massachusetts, the town where she was born. She had bumped down in Cheyenne on Wednesday night in a heavy crosswind. "The wind was pushing us out," she told reporters. "You just have to give the plane more power." According to her father, she had been assisted in the landing by Reid, her flight instructor, a veteran pilot and the president of the Half Moon Bay Pilots Association who had given her 35 hours of flying lessons. "We're trying to set a record," her father said, "but we're not trying to be stupid about it."

At the Cheyenne airport, the publicity machine went into action. The arrival was recorded by camera crews and a clutch of reporters, notebooks in hand. An exhausted Jessica seemed to understand that she always had to appear perky. "I enjoyed it," she said, forcing a smile, sounding, as always, like she was imitating adult speech. "I had two hours sleep last night." She was due to take off at 8:20 the next morning.

Cheyenne is a high-altitude airport, 6,156 ft. above sea level. The thinner air requires longer takeoff runs, and the pilot must factor this into the flight plan. "You may ask whether a seven-year-old did the figuring, and I don't know," says Charles Porter of Sky Harbor Air Service in Cheyenne. "A lot of pilots whose time is limited to sea level have forgotten and ended up in the golf course." The weather was ugly. A thunderstorm was moving in from the northwest, winds were 25 to 30 m.p.h. Thunderstorms are a potent cocktail for pilots, a possible mixture of updrafts, downdrafts, turbulence, icing and hail all at once. "I would have taxied up the runway and headed back," says "Red" Kelso of Cheyenne, a retired pilot with 52 years of flying experience. "There's no way I would have gone up in weather like that."

"The pilot is the person responsible for evaluating the weather conditions and determining whether to go," says airport manager Jerry Olson. The weather conditions were VFR--visual-flight rules--meaning instruments were not required, although another plane warned the control tower of wind shear. Jessica spoke to her mother on a cellphone as the plane was taxiing. "Mom, do you hear the rain?"