On Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:13:18 -0000, Jim Logajan
wrote:

Story on Yahoo:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080318/...obit_van_meter


Van Meter made national headlines in 1993 and 1994 when she made
her cross-country and trans-Atlantic flights accompanied only by a
flight instructor. Her instructors said she was at the controls
during the entirety of both flights.

As a sixth-grader in September 1993, Van Meter flew from Augusta,
Maine, to San Diego over five days. She had to fight strong
headwinds and turbulence that bounced her single-engine Cessna 172
and made her sick.

At the time, she was believed to be the youngest girl to fly
across the United States; the record was later broken.

Nine months later, Van Meter flew from Augusta to Glasgow,
Scotland, and was credited with being the youngest girl to make a
trans-Atlantic flight. She battled dizziness brought on by high
altitude and declared upon landing: "I always thought it would be
real hard and it was."




http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...pagewanted=all
Vicki, who is 12, will be at the controls of a single-engine
plane. No girl so young has ever piloted a plane across the
Atlantic. Her instructor will be next to her in the cockpit, for
regulations prohibit a pilot under 16 from flying solo. But Vicki
plans to handle every aspect of the flight -- navigation,
communications, fuel calculations, takeoffs, landings and long
hours in the air at about 7,000 feet above the ocean -- by
herself. ...

One day in the fall of 1992, she and her father, Jim, a
stockbroker, drove in the family van to the local airport to see
the new terminal. Mr. Van Meter, who owned a small plane years ago
and sold it to put his wife, Corinne, through college, spotted an
advertisement for a new flight school. He suggested to Vicki that,
since she wanted to be an astronaut, she might want to take a
flying lesson to see if she liked being in the air. ...


Her plane for the trans-Atlantic flight will be a Cessna 210,
which seats six and travels at about 180 miles an hour. The plane
has retractable landing gear, a first for Vicki. ...

The Van Meters will follow their daughter across the Atlantic in a
twin-engine plane chartered by the British Broadcasting
Corporation, which is making a documentary of Vicki's flight. She
already has television experience as a result of her cross-country
flight. Vicki's parents need no prompting to show videotapes of
her on the talk-show circuit, chatting and joking easily with
Bryant Gumbel, Chevy Chase, Maury Povich, Conan O'Brien, John and
Leeza.

The family is also eager to show a visitor framed photographs of
Vicki with the many celebrities she has met, including Vice
President Al Gore, who gave Vicki's entire class a tour of the
White House.

"We're just regular people, and we never expected any of this,"
Mr. Van Meter says.

Vicki herself says all the attention has been "sort of exciting,
really neat." She adds: "I'm doing this for the challenge, not for
the publicity. When I started flying, I never even thought I would
ever go up to Erie, 30 miles north of us."

Vicki has logged more than 100 hours in the air, plus 60 hours in
ground school. The Van Meters have spent more than $10,000 on her
flying lessons, with money they had put away for her college
education. Vicki's father says he hopes the investment pays off
with her appointment to the Naval Academy, which has already sent
her sweatshirts and T-shirts.


Amy Johnson, in 1930 became the first woman to fly solo from Britain
to Australia, was 26 with about as many hours as Van Meters:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Johnson

Personally, I see these children piloting stunts as pure Barnum &
Bailey. Look at what happened to Jessica (the child pilot) Dubroff:


http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...romoid=googlep
JESSICA DUBROFF'S LAST FLIGHT In the beginning it may have been
the father's idea for Jessica Dubroff to make the cross-country
trip at the age of seven [NATION, April 22], but she loved to fly.
Whether she made the flight for the world record or simply for the
love of flying, the choice was ultimately left up to her.

Your scathing article "fly till i die" was right on the money.
What a heroic indictment of child exploitation. Young Jessica had
absolutely no freedom of choice regarding her right to life,
liberty or the pursuit of a normal education. Most of her
teachings came from her self-appointed guru mom Lisa Hathaway,
who, in a supposed quest to give her daughter freedom, imbued
Jessica with Hathaway's own airhead philosophy. No wonder the kid
wanted to fly! It makes no sense for Hathaway to call a nose dive
to the ground a "state of joy."

The pint-size bicycle with training wheels, pictured in the
forefront of your photograph of Jessica checking "her" plane,
speaks volumes.