12-Year-Old Pilot Crosses Atlantic
A 12-year-old American became the youngest female pilot to fly the Atlantic when she landed her single-engine plane at Glasgow airport Tuesday.
“It was a hard flight,” Vicki Van Meter said when her blue-and-white Cessna 210 touched down after a five-hour final leg from Reykjavik in Iceland.
Her 2,000-mile flight started Sunday in Augusta, Me., the U.S. airport where Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, started her flight.
Unlike Earhart, Van Meter was accompanied throughout by a flying instructor--she is too young to fly alone legally.
Van Meter earlier became the youngest female pilot to cross the continental United States when she flew from Augusta to San Diego. Her feat was later topped by a 9-year-old.
After stepping down from her plane, Van Meter said she was looking forward to seeing her parents, who were due to arrive in Glasgow two hours later on a commercial flight from Reykjavik.
After Glasgow, she plans to visit London, France and Germany.
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