Pilot Hit With $2,000 Customs Fine in Setting Distance Mark

An Orange County pilot who recently set a world aviation distance record by flying his small plane nonstop from Australia to Phoenix has been slapped with $2,000 in fines by the U.S. Customs Service.

Pete Wilkins, a native Australian who lives in Irvine, is charged with violating four Customs Service regulations after he ended his 7,995-mile odyssey April 1 by landing virtually unannounced at Sky Harbor International Airport.

“I was pretty much prepared for a fine of some sort because I did break a few rules here and there, but this is rather steep,” Wilkins, 50, said Monday in a telephone interview from his Santa Ana office.

Wilkins, who battled bad weather and fatigue during a 41-hour flight in his single-engine Piper Malibu, said he plans to appeal the fines.

The Customs Service said Wilkins failed to obtain landing rights at Sky Harbor, provide 24 hours’ notice of his arrival, provide notice of penetration of U.S. air space and land at the nearest designated international airport to his coastline crossing point.

Wilkins said he had no choice but to break some rules if he was to break the aviation distance record of 7,668 miles for light planes of that weight range--between 1,750 and 3,000 kilograms--held by the late Max Conrad, who flew from Casablanca, Morocco, to Los Angeles in 1959.

The Washington office of the National Aeronautics Administration, the American representative of a Paris-based aviation and space record-keeping group, said April 1 that it had confirmed Wilkins’ flight through the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.