Flight Tribute Fails to Get off Ground

The Wright brothers had better luck 100 years ago.

The centennial attempt to fly a reproduction of Orville and Wilbur Wright’s plane that made the first successful powered flight ended Wednesday with a splash instead of a whoosh.

Under a light drizzle, pilot Kevin Kochersberger, an associate professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, managed to get the plane airborne less than a foot off a historically correct 200-foot-long wooden launching rail. But after a second, the plane settled back down and ran off the end of the rail and into the mud. A loud “Awwww!” rose from the crowd.

It was a minor crash, but it broke a wire support. The ground crew towed the plane inside and later scuttled another attempt.

For 34,000 onlookers and the plane’s pilot and ground crew, it was a day historically accurate only in that it was filled with the kind of trial and error that enabled the two bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio, to realize their dream on this spot in 1903 after three years of work. The event included exhibits and remarks by President Bush.

But by late in the day, many in the crowd had had enough of the Outer Banks’ nasty December weather and headed for the exits. “My feet are soaked, and I’m freezing to death” said Chris Schleter, 48, of Kitty Hawk. But “it was a great attempt,” he added. “The Wright brothers had a few failures of their own.”

The headwinds just weren’t strong enough, and the plane’s 12-horsepower gasoline engine wasn’t delivering full power in the damp conditions, said officials of the Experimental Aircraft Assn., which had commissioned the $1-million reproduction.

The plane originally had been scheduled to fly at 10:35 a.m., the exact time of the Wright Brothers’ first successful powered flight of 120 feet and 12 seconds. But officials of the association postponed the attempt in hopes of getting stronger wind.

Shortly before 4 p.m., the plane was rolled onto the field again for its second try, and the engine was started after more than a dozen yanks on the propellers. But again, the engine wasn’t turning fast enough, and the wind was less than half the 10-knot minimum needed. Rather than risking damaging the plane further or injuring Kochersberger, the attempt was scrubbed for good.