Lone Eaglet, 9, Hopes to Be the Youngest to Solo

If the weather is right, a 9-year-old San Juan Capistrano boy, Tony Aliengena, will take off Sunday in an ultra-light aircraft hoping to become the youngest person ever to solo. The flight is expected to last one hour.

But Tony had a more important adventure on his mind while practicing his flying Friday at Oceanside Municipal Airport; that adventure will begin March 30, when he will take off from John Wayne Airport and try to be the youngest person ever to fly across the United States.

“If he does it, he’ll break the record of a 10-year-old boy, Christopher Lee Marshall,” said Guy Murrel, a family friend. “Tony will not be 10 until May 23.”

Marshall, of Oceano, Calif., made his flight last August from San Luis Obispo to Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

The youngest solo flier so far, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, is Cody A. Locke, whose hometown was not recorded. He was 9 years and 316 days old when he made his flight in Mexicali, Mexico, where U. S. regulations requiring solo fliers to be 16 before being licensed do not apply.

Murrel explained that on Sunday Tony will be flying an ultra-light aircraft--sort of like a glider with a small engine--which does not come under FAA rules.

“Tony will be only 9 years and 295 days old Sunday, and he’ll do his flight in the United States,” Murrel said.

The flight is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. at either Perris Valley Airport in Riverside County or Oceanside Municipal Airport in San Diego County, with weather being the determining factor. National Aeronautics Assn. representatives will be on hand to verify the results.

Tony, a student at St. Margaret’s Episcopal School, is the son of Gary and Susan Aliengena. His father, a transportation business executive, has been flying small planes for more than 10 years, much of that time with Tony sitting on his lap and picking up pointers along the way.

The boy said he was “not nervous at all” about either the solo flight Sunday or the cross-country trip later.

“When I’m bored at home, I think about it (the cross-country flight) a lot,” he said Friday, “but sometimes I don’t think about it at all.”

He admitted he spends a lot of time playing video games and skateboarding, but his father said he is a straight-A student in the third grade, and the time off for traveling to the East Coast and back shouldn’t interfere with his education.

Gary Aliengena owns two planes, a Cessna 110 and a Cessna Centurion 210. Tony plans to make his cross-country flight in the Centurion, going from John Wayne Airport to Boston, Mass., and back, with stops about every 800 miles both ways.

With him will be Ed Fernett, an Oceanside flight instructor who, along with the boy’s father, has been instrumental in his training.

Fernett said Tony will do all the flying and navigating, and “I would take over only in an emergency.”

“This should be like a dream for a boy like him,” he said.

When it is all over, Tony said, he will “stay home and play a lot, and maybe fly once in a while.”

Asked what he would like to be when he is grown up, he said “a brain surgeon.” But his father laughed and said, “Last week he wanted to be a cowboy.”