Boy’s Joy Ride Aloft Alarms, Amazes Pilot

As a sandy-haired boy with watchful eyes waits inside a detention center this week, pilot Michael Moore looks into the cloudy Hill Country skies every night and asks himself: How? How was it possible?

How could a 16-year-old, with less than four hours of flight experience, break into Moore’s plane in Georgetown, Texas, take off in the dark, then careen through the Texas skies for close to eight hours before landing the vehicle gracefully in Brownwood more than 100 miles away, using only the instrument panel?

A foster care child at Texas Baptist Children’s Home, the young boy and the friend he took with him now face felony theft charges for the joy ride they took in the wee hours last Friday. The two boys, whose names have not been released, are at a juvenile detention center in Williamson County, where prosecutor Dan Gattis said it’s unlikely their case will actually go to trial.

Slipping from the home for children with troubled families, authorities say, the two donned ROTC military fatigues and made their way to Georgetown Municipal Airport, where Moore, an insurance agent, kept his Piper Cherokee.

A child of a broken home himself, Moore had offered to teach Children’s Home youths about aviation if they kept their grades up. The 16-year-old, Moore said, had shown intent interest during two previous excursions, but failed three classes and lost his chance for further flight lessons.

When the boy took to the skies with his friend, he’d had only 90 minutes using a primitive desktop flight simulator at Moore’s house, and about 20 minutes’ worth of access to a real flight panel, Moore said.

When the two boys were found in a fast food restaurant the next day, Moore said he was full of relief--and astonishment. Most striking, Moore says, was the boy’s takeoff and landing in overcast weather, at night.

“It sure makes me believe this kid has a bigger purpose in life in store, or else he’d otherwise be a pile of tissue and body fluids in a chunk of aluminum on the ground,” said Moore, a student of aviation history.

Phil Boyer, president of the Maryland-based Aircraft Owners and Pilots Assn., said the boys’ lives were probably saved by the wide runway they departed from, and the Piper’s relatively simple structure. But, he added, “not that I’d hold it up proudly and give them an award or anything, but it’s quite a feat.”

Moore and others said the teenager was known to have a photographic memory, and possibly memorized the flight checklist as well as the plane’s access combination. The boy was described as quiet and polite, with a strikingly relaxed demeanor.

But although he was not an attentive student, adults around him noticed his unusual facility for absorbing information, Moore said. “He could really loaf during school, and almost on the last day, read the material and ace the exam.”

Concerned that the boy doesn’t understand the magnitude of what he did, Moore is anxious that he receive professional help. Yet Moore, the child of an alcoholic and abusive father, said he can imagine the boy’s wish to fly off from the stresses of his troubled life and his regimented school routine: “I think anyone under pressure has that fantasy.”