He Flew Non-Stop but Not First Class

Pete Wilkins returned to his roots Wednesday via a non-stop flight to Sydney, but this was no Pan Am flight with a movie, beverages and peanuts.

The 50-year-old Irvine resident flew his single-engine plane alone for nearly two days from Los Angeles, becoming the first pilot to fly non-stop between the two cities in his type of aircraft, according to his family and friends.

“He called around 6 o’clock this morning to let us know he was in one lump,” Wilkins’ son Paul, 24, said Wednesday. “He sounded tired.”

Then, after getting some much-needed sleep, Wilkins called again Wednesday afternoon. The second time, his son said, “he sounded really up. He felt he had done something neat.”

It was Wilkins’ second attempt to reach his native home in his six-passenger Piper Malibu non-stop and to break the world long-distance solo flight record set in 1959.

Wilkins accomplished one of the two goals but was not able to break the 1959 record set by Max Conrad, who flew 7,668 miles without refueling in the same category of plane, said Bob B. Smith, 72, a retired engineer who helped Wilkins with his trip.

Wilkins left Los Angeles International Airport at 7:30 a.m. Monday with 560 gallons of fuel. He arrived in Sydney 45 hours and 20 minutes later, his son said.

The flight has been something of an obsession for the former race car builder.

“When I first met him, he said: ‘I tell you, it’s an obsession to fly there non-stop,’ ” Smith said.

At first, Paul Wilkins said, his father’s obsession was just “to fly there.” Then it became, “I’d like to fly there non-stop.”

Why not hop a commercial plane?

“Shoot, I can do that. You can do that. Anybody can do that,” the younger Wilkins said. “He just did it for himself.”

Paul Wilkins, who also lives in Irvine, said he wasn’t sure when his father would return to Southern California but that he might just gas up and try to fly straight through in the opposite direction.

As in a similar attempt last April, Wilkins encountered some rough weather, his son said. Last April, he was forced to end his flight 1,500 miles short of Sydney because of a typhoon west of Fiji.

In an interview last year, Wilkins, who owns an engineering consulting firm in Santa Ana, explained his obsession by saying, “It’s something I’ve wanted to do ever since I started to fly.”

Smith, of Balboa Island, speculated Wednesday that his friend may just give it another go to break the 1959 record. But, he added: “I almost hope not. This is 45 hours of flying. There is nobody else there. No sleep. It isn’t the safest thing in the world.”

So why do it?

“It’s like a a race car driver,” Smith said. “Some people run a marathon. This is another way of doing your thing.”