Father’s Aid Gives Boy Pilot Big Lift in Record Attempt

While the around-the-word flight of 11-year-old Tony Aliengena may appear to be the stuff of high adventure, pilots and aviation experts believe Tony’s father is more responsible for flying the plane than his son.

“It’s a nice trip for the boy and I think it is great for him, but what he is doing is not a difficult chore,” said Gregory Wilcox, a charter pilot for Martin Aviation at Orange County’s John Wayne Airport who, like Tony, began flying with his father when he was 4.

Tony, a San Juan Capistrano fourth-grader, is now flying across Soviet Asia in his quest to become, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe.

The trip, which started June 5 in Orange County, is to encompass 17,000 miles. On Sunday, Tony was scheduled to cross the 5,000-foot Ural Mountains from Kuibyshev to Tumen, in Siberia.

The man who dreamed up the trip, Tony’s father, Gary Aliengena, is a licensed pilot who sits at his son’s side at all times and performs the bulk of the duties inherent in such an around-the-world flight.

While taking nothing away from the boy’s enthusiasm, Wilcox and other pilots stressed that it has been Tony’s father who has borne the real headaches and logistical details that come in piloting a Cessna Centurion 210 around the world.

It is the father, they explained, who is charged with charting the route, checking weather conditions, talking with air-traffic controllers and giving his son expert advice on how to handle the plane in difficult conditions.

“I don’t see Tony as the pilot,” said Philip Lesch, 30, a flight instructor at Martin Aviation, echoing the view of other pilots interviewed. “It’s his father who talks to the controller, his father who makes all the flight plans. I see Tony there with his hands on the controls, that’s all. It’s like having a credit card and not being responsible for the charges.”

The key to flying a plane, he continued, “is not the ability to manipulate the controls, but being able to accept responsibility and everything associated with the airplane.”

‘Great for the Kids’

At the same time, Lesch said that he too was “touched how this thing has affected some people, especially Tony’s friends. They are living the excitement of this flight vicariously. It’s really great for the kids.”

Gary Aliengena has said he saw nothing wrong with Tony not being involved in every aspect of the flight. He likened his role to that of a commercial airline co-pilot whose job is to prepare the flight for the pilot. In the cockpit, it is Tony who makes all the critical decisions, such as whether to descend or ascend in bad weather, his father said.

Also on the flight 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 at the controls of the aircraft throughout the 17,000-mile trip.

On most days, the plane spends 3 to 3 1/2 hours in the air, although two of the flight’s legs were 9 hours each.

Unlike driving a car, federal aviation regulations do not list a minimum age at which a person can begin learning to fly, as long as a licensed pilot is at the controls.

To set a record as the youngest person to cross the globe, Tony must perform all takeoffs and landings, with his father at his side to intervene in an emergency.