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 carrying Jessica Dubroff, her father, Lloyd, and the girl’s flight instructor, Joe Reid, who also owned the plane, was one mile away 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 a thunderstorm coming in. The temperature was 38 degrees, an airport official in Cheyenne said.

Jessica’s confident departure from the tiny Half Moon Bay airport Wednesday--baseball cap 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--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 age 17 to obtain a pilot’s license.

Although Jessica and her father had said they hoped to set a record, the Guinness Book of World Records no longer recognizes flights made by children for fear of encouraging competition among younger and younger fliers. Guinness followed the lead of the National Aeronautic Administration, a nongovernmental group that oversees U.S. aircraft achievements and that stopped keeping records of youngest pilots in 1990.

Jessica’s father had insisted 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.

At the airport there, people speculated Thursday about who was at the controls when the plane took off in bad weather--Jessica or seasoned flight instructor Reid. 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 Thursday afternoon. “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.”

In this coastal town in San Mateo County south of San Francisco, flags were lowered to half staff in memory of the young girl whose father took her to watch planes take off and land on her 6th birthday last May--and who decided then to become a pilot. She began taking lessons and had logged 35 hours before setting off across country on a sunny Wednesday.

At the single-runway airport, people remembered Jessica coming several times a week for flying lessons from her home in nearby Pescadero. Her mother, Lisa Blair Hathaway, would wait outside the hangar in her white van with Jessica’s two other siblings in tow. Jessica’s brother Joshua, 9, also took flying lessons.

Airport regulars remembered the children as smart and poised and their mother as an enthusiastic supporter of flying lessons.

“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, helped finance the flight, according to Storz.

Even after the crash, Hathaway stood firmly behind her daughter’s hobby.

“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 upon completion of the first cross-country leg of the trip.

Hathaway said she had spoken to her daughter Thursday morning on the phone as Jessica sat in the plane in Cheyenne, the engines revving for takeoff.

“Do you hear the rain? Do you hear the rain?” Hathaway quoted her daughter saying, in their final conservation.

After the crash, Hathaway and her two other children, Joshua and 3-year-old Jasmine, left Boston’s Logan Airport for Cheyenne. “Clearly I would want all my children to die in a state of joy, but not at age 7,” Hathaway told reporters.

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, the 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 had been put up that 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.”

Dozens of people from town and others across the country besieged the local florist with orders for flowers to be sent to the airport.

Rene Castellanos stopped his garbage truck at the airport to drop off flowers. Neither he nor broker Jack McHugh knew Jessica, but both live nearby and wanted to express their sorrow.

“Her baseball hat, her charisma--she was 7 years old going on 20,” said the choked-up McHugh, bouquet in hand.

Though people here were reluctant to second-guess the decision to have a 7-year-old supposedly pilot the arduous trip, some believe Jessica’s role was limited.

“She wasn’t really flying,” said Frank Sylvestri, who runs the repair shop at the airport and has been flying there for five decades. “It was a publicity game. You know what people do to gain attention.”

His thoughts were echoed with more indignation on talk shows around the country Thursday and by some of the small plane pilots who make up the general aviation community. Electronic 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.

Another youthful pilot, then a resident in San Juan Capistrano, made a similar record-breaking flight attempt in April 1988, but the results were far different.

Anthony Aliengena, then a 9-year-old, flew five days and 2,250 miles in a Cessna Centurion plane while sitting in a child’s car seat to enable him to reach the controls. The flight, from Orange County’s John Wayne Airport to the nation’s capital, made him the youngest cross-country flier ever, according to the National Aeronautic Assn.

The boy was accompanied on his flight by his father, pilot Gary Aliengena, and a flight instructor. Neither could be reached Wednesday.

Aliengena also held the title of youngest solo pilot ever after a 3-minute, 25-second flight out of Oceanside Municipal Airport in March 1988, but that accomplishment was soon surpassed by other youthful aviators. Most recently, Daniel Shanklin, 7, of San Antonio in 1991 flew from San Diego to Kill Devil Hills, N.C., and held the claim to fame that young Jessica Dubroff reportedly aspired to possess.

Reid was remembered Thursday as a consummate pilot and instructor, a financial planner who owned another plane besides the one that crashed. “He was Mr. Half Moon Bay Airport,” said Smith.

When the journey began Wednesday, Smith said, “people were excited and elated that Jessica and Half Moon Bay were getting notoriety.”

Times staff writer Geoff Boucher contributed to this story.