Alaskan Crash Grounds Boy’s Attempt to Fly Around World

Eleven-year-old pilot Tony Aliengena and seven others escaped serious injury Tuesday when their plane flipped over and burned in a crosswind during takeoff from this remote Eskimo village.

The San Juan Capistrano youth, who was nearing the end of an around-the-globe “Friendship Flight,” and the rest of the party ran to safety after the plane--piloted by the boy’s father--crashed and burned in a bog just off the gravel landing strip.

Federal Aviation Administration officials said the single-engine, high-wing Cessna Centurion was destroyed by the fire.

Two members of the party--the boy’s father, Gary Aliengena , 39, who was at the controls, and Joseph Lee, 29, of Los Angeles, a member of a film crew documenting the flight--suffered facial cuts. The rest of the passengers, including a Times reporter, were unhurt.

“It was a real blessing that there was nobody killed,” said Paul Steucke, a spokesman for the FAA’s Alaska Region.

Steucke said the weather at the time was “lousy” but sufficient to fly. Clouds were down to 800 feet and it was drizzling.

The crash took place at about 8:45 p.m. Alaska time as the boy and his passengers were beginning a flight to Nome after a taking a side trip to do some fishing. Golovin, a Seward Peninsula community of 120 people situated on the Bering Sea 90 miles from Nome, is inaccessible except by boat and air.

Members of the expedition were shaken and disconsolate.

“I don’t care about the Friendship Flight right now,” said the boy’s mother, Susan Aliengena, who is accompanying Tony on his journey, along with other family members, friends and the news media. “I’m just glad that we’re all alive.”

Tony and the others had stopped here just days before he was scheduled to complete his seven-week Odyssey, which began June 5 at John Wayne Airport in Orange County.

The aircraft was roaring down the runway at about 50 to 60 m.p.h., well short of its takeoff speed of 90 m.p.h., when a gust of wind lifted the plane off the runway, which sits on a 30-foot-high embankment.

Before the pilot could react, the plane careened off the embankment and into the bog alongside the runway, hitting wheels down but rolling onto the right wing. A fire broke out immediately.

As the passengers freed themselves and scampered from the wreckage, a fishing guide who had watched the group take off ran down the runway yelling for them to get away from the burning aircraft.

“I saw a cloud of smoke and flames,” guide Eddie Smith said. “I didn’t think there would be any survivors.”

No one needed an encouragement. Despite the sticky conditions of the bog, which claimed at least one passenger’s shoe, the group got away from the plane within seconds.