7-Year-Old Flier, Father, Instructor Die in Crash

A 7-year-old girl attempting to become the youngest person to pilot a plane across the country died Thursday morning in a crash just after takeoff during a rainstorm in Cheyenne, Wyo., one day into a journey that began here in front of cheering family and friends.

The four-seat Cessna 177B Cardinal carrying Jessica Dubroff, her father, Lloyd, and the girl’s flight instructor, Joe Reid, who also owned the plane, was a mile from the Cheyenne airport when it took a nose-dive into a neighborhood street, narrowly missing a house. All three aboard the plane were killed. No one on the ground was hurt.

The National Transportation Safety Board was investigating the cause of the crash, which occurred about 8:25 a.m. in a cold, heavy rain, with gusty winds and five miles visibility. The temperature was 38 degrees, “right on the edge of icing being a problem,” said Cheyenne airport manager Jerry Olson.

Jessica’s confident departure from the tiny Half Moon Bay airport Wednesday--baseball cap reading “Women Fly” on her head, an ace of spades tucked in her wallet--had been broadcast around the country, and news of the crash triggered a wave of sadness. It also unleashed a flood of questions and some anger about the appropriateness of allowing a 7-year-old--who stood 4 feet, 2 inches tall and weighed 55 pounds--to fly a plane.

Aviation officials said the flight instructor had a full set of controls at his seat and was legally in charge of the flight, with Jessica only a passenger. Nonetheless, in Washington, Federal Aviation Administration chief David Hinson ordered a review of the rules covering when an unlicensed pilot may take the controls. A person must be at least 16 to fly solo, but children of any age may take the controls under supervision if the pilot feels it is safe.

Officials who examined the wreckage said it was unclear who was piloting the plane when it crashed.

Although Jessica and her father had said they hoped to set a record, the Guinness Book of World Records in 1990 stopped recognizing flights made by children for fear of encouraging competition among younger and younger fliers. Guinness followed the lead of the National Aeronautic Administration, a Virginia group that oversees U.S. aircraft achievements.

Jessica’s father had insisted that his daughter was competent to make the eight-day, 6,900-mile round-trip to the family’s former home in Falmouth, Mass., and back to California. She sat on a red booster seat and extenders were attached to the pedals so her legs could reach the rudder controls.

“She does the preflight, the run-up, she files the flight plan, she taxis out, she takes off,” Dubroff told a reporter before leaving Half Moon Bay for Cheyenne, their first stop. They were due to stay overnight in Fort Wayne, Ind., Thursday and reach Falmouth today.

After arriving in Cheyenne to a throng of waiting media and a gift from the community, Jessica told reporters she was excited but tired. “It’s been a long day,” she said. “I enjoyed it. I can’t wait until the next day. I can’t wait to sleep. I had two hours of sleep last night.”

Tom Johnson, whose office was near the crash site, said he noticed the plane shortly after takeoff and that it appeared the pilot was trying to return to the airport. He said the craft never got higher than 400 feet off the ground before plummeting nose first.

“I kept thinking, ‘Please! Please get some altitude! “‘ said Johnson, a 15-year pilot. “It just went right into the ground. I knew no one survived. It would have been impossible.”

Jessica’s mother, Lisa Blair Hathaway, said she had spoken to her daughter Thursday morning on a cellular phone as the trio sat in the plane in Cheyenne, the engines revving for takeoff. She heard no evidence of problems as the plane began to depart. “Do you hear the rain? Do you hear the rain?” Hathaway quoted her daughter asking in their final conversation.

“I beg people to let children fly if they want to fly,” Hathaway told a reporter Thursday afternoon in Falmouth, where she had expected to greet Jessica today.

Hathaway and her two other children--Joshua, 9, and Jasmine, 3--left Boston’s Logan International Airport for Cheyenne on Thursday afternoon. “Clearly I would want all my children to die in a state of joy,” Hathaway told reporters. “I would prefer it was not at age 7 but, god, she went with her joy and her passion, and her life was in her hands.”

Word of the crash stunned the small coastal town of Half Moon Bay. At the airport, people speculated about who was at the controls when the plane took off in bad weather--Jessica or seasoned flight instructor Reid, founder of the airport’s flying club. One of the airport’s flight instructors, Forrest Storz, said Reid often let Jessica take off and land by herself.

“If you take over the reins at the first sign of a little trouble, it’s no longer a learning experience,” Storz said. “That’s not how you teach in our world of aviation, but you should know this too--Joe wasn’t a risk-taker. He was demanding and he was skilled and he knew what the hell he was doing.”

And Jessica, he said, was “as capable of flying that airplane the way it was equipped as anybody else.”

Jessica’s father took her to the airport to watch planes on her sixth birthday--and it was then she found her desire to learn to fly. She had been taking lessons for four months and had logged 35 hours before setting off across country on a partly sunny Wednesday. “You’ve got to make sure you’re not crashing or anything,” she said before taking off. “You have to concentrate on the instruments, and you look out the window.”

At the single-runway airport, people remembered Jessica coming several times a week for flying lessons from her home in nearby Pescadero. Her mother would wait outside the hangar in her white van with Jessica’s two other siblings in tow.

“The mom very much considered this one of her kids’ activities--like ballet lessons or riding ponies,” Storz said.

The girl’s father, who was divorced from Jessica’s mother and lived in San Mateo with his current wife, helped finance the flight, Storz said.

According to people who knew the family, Hathaway diligently imparted the tenets of her lifestyle to her children. They were schooled at home, ate organic food and eschewed the diversions that command the interest of many other children.

“A lot of people here march to the beat of a different drummer,” said Mark Smith, owner of the Three Zero Cafe at the Half Moon Bay Airport. “And the mother was part of that. They didn’t watch television. Jessica was very proud of that. She told me TV was a waste of time.”

It was at Smith’s cafe that Jessica’s mother would allow her daughter to indulge her weakness for French fries--while her mother ordered up fruit and bagels without cream cheese for the young vegetarian family. Smith remembered Jessica as “7 going on 25.”

At Cozzolino’s Nursery, a sign said, “Jessica: an Inspiration to Us All. Keep Soaring.”

Jim Cozzolino’s daughters, ages 4 and 6, had followed Jessica’s flight with interest. “It was hard to tell them what happened,” said Cozzolino. “I told them, ‘Remember the little girl from Pescadero who was going to fly across the country? Well, her plane went down this morning. She had an accident.’ It was hard for them to understand.”

Outside Jessica’s family’s small house in Pescadero, the front porch was filled Thursday evening with flower arrangements and a large brown teddy bear. A neighbor remembered Jessica as “very outgoing, very articulate and very adventurous.”

Some neighbors said they had misgivings about Jessica’s ambitious undertaking. “The parents kept saying they weren’t doing it for notoriety, but we had to wonder,” said a neighbor across the street who did not want his name published. “It didn’t feel right when we first heard about it. She hadn’t gone through any extended training. They were full of confidence, but I don’t think they understood what was involved.”

At the airport in Half Moon Bay, some wondered how much actual flying Jessica did on the trip. “She wasn’t really flying,” said Frank Sylvestri, a pilot of five decades who runs the repair shop and knew Reid. “It was a publicity game. You know what people do to gain attention.”

Sylvestri added that the conditions at Cheyenne’s airport might have contributed to the accident. The single-engine Cessna would have lost 20% of its 180 horsepower at the 6,000-foot elevation, he noted. “Combine that loss of horsepower with the bad weather, and I think Joe had a problem,” he said.

In the wake of the crash, indignation erupted across talk shows and electronic forums. Traffic on the CompuServe online service’s aviation forum crackled with anger over a 7-year-old being promoted as a pilot.

“I feel that there is no place in aviation for such foolishness as this type of flight,” said one on-line user.

Lloyd Dubroff, who was 57, was a corporate consultant working for Visa International in San Mateo, according to neighbors of the family in Pescadero. Before the flight left Wednesday, Dubroff said he was inspired by another young girl’s cross-country flight several years ago, and when Jessica expressed an interest in flying a year ago, he asked her if she would like to try such a flight. She agreed. “I’m the culprit,” Dubroff said.

Reid, 52, was a broker with Dean Witter Reynolds Inc. in Palo Alto and lived in Half Moon Bay. “He was Mr. Half Moon Bay Airport,” Smith said.

Hall reported from Los Angeles, Arax from Half Moon Bay and Pescadero. Associated Press also contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Jessica’s Route

Here are the stops on the cross-country flight planned for the 7-year-old pilot, her father and an instructor. They crashed in Cheyenne, Wyo., early Thursday.

1) Half Moon Bay: Start of flight

2) Cheyenne, Wyo.: Plane crashes on takeoff

3) Ft. Wayne, Ind.

4) Falmouth, Mass.: Destination

****

Planned return trip

5) Washington, D.C.

6) Lakeland, Fla.

7) Houston

8) Sedona, Ariz.

Half Moon Bay

Source: AP