18 People and 3 Planes Make Up Tony’s Around-the-World Flight

Accompanying Tony Aliengena on his historic flight around the world will be an entourage of 17 people, including his family and journalists from the United States and Soviet Union.

Five passengers will be seated in Tony’s single-engine Cessna Centurion. The other members of the entourage will ride in two chase planes.

IN TONY’S CESSNA

His father, Gary Aliengena, 39, a certified pilot who owns the plane. Aliengena, a real estate investor and truck transportation broker, taught Tony to fly and will be riding in the co-pilot’s seat for the duration of the flight. Aliengena is an avid hunter and fisherman who frequently flies his family to its mountaintop retreat in southern Utah. He also helps coach Tony’s Little League baseball team.

Susan Aliengena, 39, a homemaker, has been in charge of such details as obtaining Soviet visas for all of the Americans going on the trip. She is active in civic affairs in the family’s hometown of San Juan Capistrano, where she has served as co-chairman of the local PTA.

His 9-year-old sister, Alaina, who attends third grade at Prentice Day School in Newport Beach. Alaina helped put together a 1,000-foot “friendship” scroll that is to be presented to Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Moscow.

Tony’s Soviet pen pal, Roman Tcheremnykh, 10, who flew to Orange County on Saturday to meet the Aliengena family and is to accompany them for the duration of the trip.

Gunter Hagen, 58, a retired physicist from Malibu who is going along as an official observer for the National Aeronautic Assn., the U.S. sanctioning body for all world and national aviation records. Hagen, a longtime private pilot, will be on hand to verify whether Tony remains in sole control of the aircraft throughout the 17,500-mile flight.

IN CHASE PLANE

Riding in a twin-engine Beechcraft King Air, which will carry spare parts and luggage, will be:

Lance Allyn, an orthopedic surgeon from Fresno who owns the King Air and will be piloting it for all but one week of the journey. During the third week of the trip, when the entourage enters the Soviet Union, Allyn has plans to fly commercially back to the United States and attend his daughter’s wedding in Boston. He will relinquish control of the aircraft during that time to Garry Zinger, a private pilot from Visalia. Allyn will rejoin the trip in Moscow.

Guy Murrel, 28, a public relations consultant from Costa Mesa who has been serving as coordinator of Friendship Flight ‘89, the project under which Tony is flying around the world. During the flight, Murrel will be coordinating press conferences and public events involving the entourage. He will fly part of the time in the chase plane and part of the time in a commercial jet to prepare advance work.

Two Soviet journalists. Maxin Chikin, of the newspaper Pravda, and Alexei Grinevich, of a Soviet magazine, who will be filing dispatches along the way to the Soviet Union, where there is already intense public curiosity about a boy who would try to fly a plane around the world. The two journalists were due to arrive in Orange County on Saturday.

Jim Carlton, 33, of Laguna Beach, a reporter for The Times’ Orange County Edition.

FILM CREW

Riding in a twin-engine Cessna 421 will be:

Pat Wiesner, 53, a magazine publisher from Denver, Colo., who owns the aircraft and will be piloting it during the journey. Wiesner is also bringing his wife, Janet, 52, and their 10-year-old son, Michael. Wiesner said he has flown extensively throughout the United States and South America.

Four members of an independent film production crew from Los Angeles. The crew, consisting of Shawn Hardin, 27, Julia Roberson, Susan Eisner, 28, and Joseph Lee, 29, plans to produce a film documentary on Tony’s flight.