Friendship Flight : Tony Circles the Globe : Tony Finns for Himself in Landing at Helsinki

Shrugging off a strike by air-traffic controllers, 11-year-old Tony Aliengena of San Juan Capistrano flew into Helsinki on Wednesday and got ready to head for the Soviet Union.

“The weather was beautiful; it was a great flight,” said 28-year-old Guy Murrel of Costa Mesa, a coordinator of the Friendship Flight designed to make Tony the youngest person to pilot a plane around the world.

Because of a three-hour strike by controllers to dramatize their demands for better working conditions, the Helsinki airport was closed to commercial traffic. But the youngster was allowed to land his Cessna 210 Centurion after the hour-and-40-minute flight from Stockholm.

Murrel, who flew in the plane with Tony, said the Americans received word of the strike shortly before takeoff, and the job action actually began while the Cessna was in the air.

“Tony had to be just a little more alert and find his way to the airport without the help of any controllers,” Murrel said. “He basically just had to keep in contact (visually) with surrounding aircraft.”

Although there were few other planes in the air, Murrel said, three planes were waiting at the Helsinki airport to take off after Tony landed.

Tony is also able to get advice every step of the way from his father, Gary, 39, a certified pilot traveling with his son and supervising his flight, as he did last year when Tony became the youngest pilot to fly across the United States. Also on the journey are Tony’s mother, Susan, and his 9-year-old sister, Alaina.

Also accompanying the entourage is Gunter Hagan, 58, a retired physicist from Malibu who is serving as an official observer for the National Aeronautic Assn., the U.S. sanctioning body for all world and national aviation records. It is up to Hagen to verify that Tony remains in sole control of the aircraft throughout the 17,500-mile flight.

The trip from Stockholm to Helsinki came after a day off for the 11 people in Tony’s plane and two accompanying aircraft making the around-the-world flight. Tony, his father and the youngster’s Russian pen pal, Roman Tcheremnykh, enjoyed their day off by heading for the countryside outside Stockholm for a day’s fishing, Murrel said. The boys caught enough of the small, local lake fish for dinner, which was prepared by their hotel chef.

On Friday, Tony and his entourage plan to fly from Helsinki to Leningrad, the city of culture, palaces and lakes that was known as St. Petersburg in the days when it was Russia’s capital and the home of the czars. Now it is the second-largest city in the Soviet Union and a major industrial center.

Next week, Tony lands in Moscow, where the schedule calls for him to deliver more than 50,000 letters from U.S. schoolchildren to Soviet youngsters and to present Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev with a 1,000-foot-long “friendship scroll”.

“We have come to your country with warm hearts and open arms,” reads the scroll addressed to Gorbachev and signed by youngsters across the country, including Tony’s fourth-grade classmates from St. Margaret’s School in San Juan Capistrano. “With us, we carry our message of friendship,” says the scroll. “As we kids are the leaders of tomorrow, we can work together for a better world.”

FLIGHT LOG: Page 2