pilot disappears while ferrying plane over Africa

'Lone wolf' pilot disappears while ferrying plane over Africa

By: JENNIFER KAY - Associated Press
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007...0716_04_46.txt

MIAMI -- The first few hours of silence after Lori Love's plane
disappeared off West Africa didn't come as much of a surprise to those
who know her.

The "lone wolf," as she likes to call herself, doesn't like mid-air
chatter. She had asked for this solo flight through long stretches of
sky not covered by radar.

A longtime friend, Steve Hall, had hired her to ferry a single-engine
Beechcraft from Florida to South Africa. She exchanged a cheerful,
routine radio transmission with another pilot about an hour after
taking off from Accra, Ghana, last Friday night, Hall said.

That was the last time anyone heard from Love. Ghana air traffic
controllers failed to establish contact with her about 15 minutes
later. Her expected arrival time in Windhoek, Namibia, late Saturday
morning passed without her wheels touching down.

Most troubling: The ace pilot and skydiver never activated a handheld
emergency beacon that would have tipped rescuers to her location by
GPS, Hall said.

Search efforts from several African countries have stopped tracing her
expected flight path, failing for almost a week to find any sign of
her plane or her emergency raft, Hall said.

Love would not have taken off from the Ghanian capital if she hadn't
been confident her plane was fine, Hall said. A minor electrical
problem in the plane's alternator switch had been fixed during a brief
layover in Accra, and she had 18 hours of fuel for the nearly
2,300-mile flight south to Namibia.

"Something catastrophic must have happened," he said. It's not known
whether the electrical glitch resurfaced, or if it was part of some
fatal problem.

"I'm just praying she will reappear and give me hell and say, 'You
gave me a lousy airplane,"' he said.

If it flies, Love knows how to keep it in the air. The 57-year-old
woman raised in Wichita, Kan., was certified to teach flying and
skydiving, rig parachutes and fly helicopters, gliders, single- and
multiengine planes that could touch down on land or sea, according to
Federal Aviation Administration records.

She logged 15,000 hours as a pilot and completed 4,000 parachute jumps
before a bad back made her give up skydiving in 1999, her colleagues
said. Love never stays in one place too long, but she ran her own
airport in Alabama for five years before feeling the itch to move again.

She keeps her late 1970s Dodge Maxivan rolling, too -- 555,000 miles
and counting, Hall said, tuned with a set of tools at least as old as
the vehicle.

"Everything I own is inside it," Love told a National Air and Space
Museum photographer for a 1997 book about women pilots. "I honestly
thought by now I would be tired of that lifestyle and be ready to
settle down, but it hasn't happened."

She's had a couple scrapes: a brief marriage after college, a tangle
of power lines that dumped her crop duster upside-down in a cotton
field. Nothing she couldn't walk away from.

Love wasn't a daredevil child, but it was hard to keep her on the
ground once she picked up skydiving at the University of Kansas, said
her father, Loren Fred.

She once parachuted off a utility pole in Oklahoma, he recalled. She
also dropped tools from her helicopter to lumberjacks in Alaska, and
defied a chauvinist crop duster in Arizona.

"He wasn't going to hire a woman pilot, but he consented to put her in
a plane and in the most difficult positions and see if she couldn't
get out of them," Fred said. "She did, and she got the job."

Flying also eased the strain of scoliosis on her back, her father told
The Associated Press.

"That was a relief, really," he said.

After years of moving around the country, Love settled for a time in
Gainesville, Fla., to pursue a doctorate in special education at the
University of Florida. Three years ago, she gave up her studies and
returned home to Wichita to care for Fred, 95, when his health began
to fail.

Love just started ferrying planes again, commuting from Kansas to
Tampa whenever Hall had work for her. She wants to make enough money
so she could take time off this winter to finally finish her
dissertation, her father said.

Hall looks for a special kind of pilot for the international aircraft
delivery company he runs out of Tampa: those who can handle flying
alone nonstop for nearly a day at a time to remote air strips.

Love's independence makes her perfect for the job, Hall said.

"She didn't like to travel with people," he said. "When she didn't
call the other pilot after one hour, that's Lori. She didn't want to
talk to you."

They have worked together on and off since 1978, and she called him up
eight months ago looking for work ferrying aircraft again.

She asked for the long flights to India and Russia, even Afghanistan
if he'd let her. Hall trusts her as "a good stick."

On her last job, she had hopscotched from Tampa to Maine, the Azores,
the Canary Islands and then Ghana over eight days. She wanted to make
it to Cape Town, South Africa, in just one more jump after Ghana, but
Hall persuaded her to add the brief rest in Namibia. Heading there,
she disappeared.

Love lives for the adrenaline rush of flying, but she leaves nothing
to chance back on the ground. She always leaves a note that begins,
"In the event I don't come back...," on a counter in her apartment,
detailing instructions for taking care of her ailing father and
beloved 22-pound cat, Jeda, friends said.

"It was kind of a schoolteacher-y thing. She was very organized like
that," said Judi Ladd, a fellow UF graduate student in Gainesville who
has been entrusted with Love's cat.

Love is a vegetarian and dotes on animals. She volunteers to round up
feral cats in Wichita, where she had been piloting skydiving trips
over the past year.

"It was kind of interesting to see her around the airport. She looked
like somebody's grandmother more than a pilot extraordinaire," said
Martin Myrtle, owner of Wichita's Air Capital Drop Zone.

Love is pursuing her special education doctorate to advocate for the
severely handicapped, Ladd said.

She wasn't worried about the long trip, Ladd said.

"She had done that run at least once before," Ladd said. "To her, it
was pretty run-of-the-mill, just back and forth."

On Aug 25, 8:09 pm, "NW_Pilot"
wrote:
'Lone wolf' pilot disappears while ferrying plane over Africa

By: JENNIFER KAY - Associated Presshttp://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/08/24/backpage/8_23_0716_04_46.txt

MIAMI -- The first few hours of silence after Lori Love's plane
disappeared off West Africa didn't come as much of a surprise to those
who know her.

The "lone wolf," as she likes to call herself, doesn't like mid-air
chatter. She had asked for this solo flight through long stretches of
sky not covered by radar.

A longtime friend, Steve Hall, had hired her to ferry a single-engine
Beechcraft from Florida to South Africa. She exchanged a cheerful,
routine radio transmission with another pilot about an hour after
taking off from Accra, Ghana, last Friday night, Hall said.

That was the last time anyone heard from Love. Ghana air traffic
controllers failed to establish contact with her about 15 minutes
later. Her expected arrival time in Windhoek, Namibia, late Saturday
morning passed without her wheels touching down.

Most troubling: The ace pilot and skydiver never activated a handheld
emergency beacon that would have tipped rescuers to her location by
GPS, Hall said.

Search efforts from several African countries have stopped tracing her
expected flight path, failing for almost a week to find any sign of
her plane or her emergency raft, Hall said.

Love would not have taken off from the Ghanian capital if she hadn't
been confident her plane was fine, Hall said. A minor electrical
problem in the plane's alternator switch had been fixed during a brief
layover in Accra, and she had 18 hours of fuel for the nearly
2,300-mile flight south to Namibia.

"Something catastrophic must have happened," he said. It's not known
whether the electrical glitch resurfaced, or if it was part of some
fatal problem.

"I'm just praying she will reappear and give me hell and say, 'You
gave me a lousy airplane,"' he said.

If it flies, Love knows how to keep it in the air. The 57-year-old
woman raised in Wichita, Kan., was certified to teach flying and
skydiving, rig parachutes and fly helicopters, gliders, single- and
multiengine planes that could touch down on land or sea, according to
Federal Aviation Administration records.

She logged 15,000 hours as a pilot and completed 4,000 parachute jumps
before a bad back made her give up skydiving in 1999, her colleagues
said. Love never stays in one place too long, but she ran her own
airport in Alabama for five years before feeling the itch to move again.

She keeps her late 1970s Dodge Maxivan rolling, too -- 555,000 miles
and counting, Hall said, tuned with a set of tools at least as old as
the vehicle.

"Everything I own is inside it," Love told a National Air and Space
Museum photographer for a 1997 book about women pilots. "I honestly
thought by now I would be tired of that lifestyle and be ready to
settle down, but it hasn't happened."

She's had a couple scrapes: a brief marriage after college, a tangle
of power lines that dumped her crop duster upside-down in a cotton
field. Nothing she couldn't walk away from.

Love wasn't a daredevil child, but it was hard to keep her on the
ground once she picked up skydiving at the University of Kansas, said
her father, Loren Fred.

She once parachuted off a utility pole in Oklahoma, he recalled. She
also dropped tools from her helicopter to lumberjacks in Alaska, and
defied a chauvinist crop duster in Arizona.

"He wasn't going to hire a woman pilot, but he consented to put her in
a plane and in the most difficult positions and see if she couldn't
get out of them," Fred said. "She did, and she got the job."

Flying also eased the strain of scoliosis on her back, her father told
The Associated Press.

"That was a relief, really," he said.

After years of moving around the country, Love settled for a time in
Gainesville, Fla., to pursue a doctorate in special education at the
University of Florida. Three years ago, she gave up her studies and
returned home to Wichita to care for Fred, 95, when his health began
to fail.

Love just started ferrying planes again, commuting from Kansas to
Tampa whenever Hall had work for her. She wants to make enough money
so she could take time off this winter to finally finish her
dissertation, her father said.

Hall looks for a special kind of pilot for the international aircraft
delivery company he runs out of Tampa: those who can handle flying
alone nonstop for nearly a day at a time to remote air strips.

Love's independence makes her perfect for the job, Hall said.

"She didn't like to travel with people," he said. "When she didn't
call the other pilot after one hour, that's Lori. She didn't want to
talk to you."

They have worked together on and off since 1978, and she called him up
eight months ago looking for work ferrying aircraft again.

She asked for the long flights to India and Russia, even Afghanistan
if he'd let her. Hall trusts her as "a good stick."

On her last job, she had hopscotched from Tampa to Maine, the Azores,
the Canary Islands and then Ghana over eight days. She wanted to make
it to Cape Town, South Africa, in just one more jump after Ghana, but
Hall persuaded her to add the brief rest in Namibia. Heading there,
she disappeared.

Love lives for the adrenaline rush of flying, but she leaves nothing
to chance back on the ground. She always leaves a note that begins,
"In the event I don't come back...," on a counter in her apartment,
detailing instructions for taking care of her ailing father and
beloved 22-pound cat, Jeda, friends said.

"It was kind of a schoolteacher-y thing. She was very organized like
that," said Judi Ladd, a fellow UF graduate student in Gainesville who
has been entrusted with Love's cat.

Love is a vegetarian and dotes on animals. She volunteers to round up
feral cats in Wichita, where she had been piloting skydiving trips
over the past year.

"It was kind of interesting to see her around the airport. She looked
like somebody's grandmother more than a pilot extraordinaire," said
Martin Myrtle, owner of Wichita's Air Capital Drop Zone.

Love is pursuing her special education doctorate to advocate for the
severely handicapped, Ladd said.

She wasn't worried about the long trip, Ladd said.

"She had done that run at least once before," Ladd said. "To her, it
was pretty run-of-the-mill, just back and forth."

Wowww. I haven't seen Lori since back in the 80's when she was doing
some spraying out of Tulare and I was teaching pilots in a Stearman
there. Always enjoyed seeing her in her short shorts... good looking
woman and full of adventure. We talked jumping a few times but never
jumped together.
If she went down on her flight I hope it was quick. Like many
international ferry pilots who just disappeared, we may never know
what happened. I nearly had the same experience over the Bayuda desert
when I got screwed up in a sand storm in Sudan.

"Ol Shy & Bashful" wrote in message
oups.com...
On Aug 25, 8:09 pm, "NW_Pilot"
wrote:
'Lone wolf' pilot disappears while ferrying plane over Africa

By: JENNIFER KAY - Associated
Presshttp://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/08/24/backpage/8_23_0716_04_46.txt

MIAMI -- The first few hours of silence after Lori Love's plane
disappeared off West Africa didn't come as much of a surprise to those
who know her.

The "lone wolf," as she likes to call herself, doesn't like mid-air
chatter. She had asked for this solo flight through long stretches of
sky not covered by radar.

A longtime friend, Steve Hall, had hired her to ferry a single-engine
Beechcraft from Florida to South Africa. She exchanged a cheerful,
routine radio transmission with another pilot about an hour after
taking off from Accra, Ghana, last Friday night, Hall said.

That was the last time anyone heard from Love. Ghana air traffic
controllers failed to establish contact with her about 15 minutes
later. Her expected arrival time in Windhoek, Namibia, late Saturday
morning passed without her wheels touching down.

Most troubling: The ace pilot and skydiver never activated a handheld
emergency beacon that would have tipped rescuers to her location by
GPS, Hall said.

Search efforts from several African countries have stopped tracing her
expected flight path, failing for almost a week to find any sign of
her plane or her emergency raft, Hall said.

Love would not have taken off from the Ghanian capital if she hadn't
been confident her plane was fine, Hall said. A minor electrical
problem in the plane's alternator switch had been fixed during a brief
layover in Accra, and she had 18 hours of fuel for the nearly
2,300-mile flight south to Namibia.

"Something catastrophic must have happened," he said. It's not known
whether the electrical glitch resurfaced, or if it was part of some
fatal problem.

"I'm just praying she will reappear and give me hell and say, 'You
gave me a lousy airplane,"' he said.

If it flies, Love knows how to keep it in the air. The 57-year-old
woman raised in Wichita, Kan., was certified to teach flying and
skydiving, rig parachutes and fly helicopters, gliders, single- and
multiengine planes that could touch down on land or sea, according to
Federal Aviation Administration records.

She logged 15,000 hours as a pilot and completed 4,000 parachute jumps
before a bad back made her give up skydiving in 1999, her colleagues
said. Love never stays in one place too long, but she ran her own
airport in Alabama for five years before feeling the itch to move again.

She keeps her late 1970s Dodge Maxivan rolling, too -- 555,000 miles
and counting, Hall said, tuned with a set of tools at least as old as
the vehicle.

"Everything I own is inside it," Love told a National Air and Space
Museum photographer for a 1997 book about women pilots. "I honestly
thought by now I would be tired of that lifestyle and be ready to
settle down, but it hasn't happened."

She's had a couple scrapes: a brief marriage after college, a tangle
of power lines that dumped her crop duster upside-down in a cotton
field. Nothing she couldn't walk away from.

Love wasn't a daredevil child, but it was hard to keep her on the
ground once she picked up skydiving at the University of Kansas, said
her father, Loren Fred.

She once parachuted off a utility pole in Oklahoma, he recalled. She
also dropped tools from her helicopter to lumberjacks in Alaska, and
defied a chauvinist crop duster in Arizona.

"He wasn't going to hire a woman pilot, but he consented to put her in
a plane and in the most difficult positions and see if she couldn't
get out of them," Fred said. "She did, and she got the job."

Flying also eased the strain of scoliosis on her back, her father told
The Associated Press.

"That was a relief, really," he said.

After years of moving around the country, Love settled for a time in
Gainesville, Fla., to pursue a doctorate in special education at the
University of Florida. Three years ago, she gave up her studies and
returned home to Wichita to care for Fred, 95, when his health began
to fail.

Love just started ferrying planes again, commuting from Kansas to
Tampa whenever Hall had work for her. She wants to make enough money
so she could take time off this winter to finally finish her
dissertation, her father said.

Hall looks for a special kind of pilot for the international aircraft
delivery company he runs out of Tampa: those who can handle flying
alone nonstop for nearly a day at a time to remote air strips.

Love's independence makes her perfect for the job, Hall said.

"She didn't like to travel with people," he said. "When she didn't
call the other pilot after one hour, that's Lori. She didn't want to
talk to you."

They have worked together on and off since 1978, and she called him up
eight months ago looking for work ferrying aircraft again.

She asked for the long flights to India and Russia, even Afghanistan
if he'd let her. Hall trusts her as "a good stick."

On her last job, she had hopscotched from Tampa to Maine, the Azores,
the Canary Islands and then Ghana over eight days. She wanted to make
it to Cape Town, South Africa, in just one more jump after Ghana, but
Hall persuaded her to add the brief rest in Namibia. Heading there,
she disappeared.

Love lives for the adrenaline rush of flying, but she leaves nothing
to chance back on the ground. She always leaves a note that begins,
"In the event I don't come back...," on a counter in her apartment,
detailing instructions for taking care of her ailing father and
beloved 22-pound cat, Jeda, friends said.

"It was kind of a schoolteacher-y thing. She was very organized like
that," said Judi Ladd, a fellow UF graduate student in Gainesville who
has been entrusted with Love's cat.

Love is a vegetarian and dotes on animals. She volunteers to round up
feral cats in Wichita, where she had been piloting skydiving trips
over the past year.

"It was kind of interesting to see her around the airport. She looked
like somebody's grandmother more than a pilot extraordinaire," said
Martin Myrtle, owner of Wichita's Air Capital Drop Zone.

Love is pursuing her special education doctorate to advocate for the
severely handicapped, Ladd said.

She wasn't worried about the long trip, Ladd said.

"She had done that run at least once before," Ladd said. "To her, it
was pretty run-of-the-mill, just back and forth."

Wowww. I haven't seen Lori since back in the 80's when she was doing
some spraying out of Tulare and I was teaching pilots in a Stearman
there. Always enjoyed seeing her in her short shorts... good looking
woman and full of adventure. We talked jumping a few times but never
jumped together.
If she went down on her flight I hope it was quick. Like many
international ferry pilots who just disappeared, we may never know
what happened. I nearly had the same experience over the Bayuda desert
when I got screwed up in a sand storm in Sudan.


I believe it was Her I was talking to back on May 8th Wordword Aviation In
Goose Bay while waiting out the ice enroute to UK in a 182, She was flying I
believe a Caravan via the far north route.

So far this Year 2007 we have Lori & Fritz, both well seasoned and respected
pilot's.

On Aug 25, 9:09?pm, "NW_Pilot"
wrote:
'Lone wolf' pilot disappears while ferrying plane over Africa

By: JENNIFER KAY - Associated Presshttp://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/08/24/backpage/8_23_0716_04_46.txt

MIAMI -- The first few hours of silence after Lori Love's plane
disappeared off West Africa didn't come as much of a surprise to those
who know her.

The "lone wolf," as she likes to call herself, doesn't like mid-air
chatter. She had asked for this solo flight through long stretches of
sky not covered by radar.

A longtime friend, Steve Hall, had hired her to ferry a single-engine
Beechcraft from Florida to South Africa. She exchanged a cheerful,
routine radio transmission with another pilot about an hour after
taking off from Accra, Ghana, last Friday night, Hall said.

That was the last time anyone heard from Love. Ghana air traffic
controllers failed to establish contact with her about 15 minutes
later. Her expected arrival time in Windhoek, Namibia, late Saturday
morning passed without her wheels touching down.

Most troubling: The ace pilot and skydiver never activated a handheld
emergency beacon that would have tipped rescuers to her location by
GPS, Hall said.

Search efforts from several African countries have stopped tracing her
expected flight path, failing for almost a week to find any sign of
her plane or her emergency raft, Hall said.

Love would not have taken off from the Ghanian capital if she hadn't
been confident her plane was fine, Hall said. A minor electrical
problem in the plane's alternator switch had been fixed during a brief
layover in Accra, and she had 18 hours of fuel for the nearly
2,300-mile flight south to Namibia.

"Something catastrophic must have happened," he said. It's not known
whether the electrical glitch resurfaced, or if it was part of some
fatal problem.

"I'm just praying she will reappear and give me hell and say, 'You
gave me a lousy airplane,"' he said.

If it flies, Love knows how to keep it in the air. The 57-year-old
woman raised in Wichita, Kan., was certified to teach flying and
skydiving, rig parachutes and fly helicopters, gliders, single- and
multiengine planes that could touch down on land or sea, according to
Federal Aviation Administration records.

She logged 15,000 hours as a pilot and completed 4,000 parachute jumps
before a bad back made her give up skydiving in 1999, her colleagues
said. Love never stays in one place too long, but she ran her own
airport in Alabama for five years before feeling the itch to move again.

She keeps her late 1970s Dodge Maxivan rolling, too -- 555,000 miles
and counting, Hall said, tuned with a set of tools at least as old as
the vehicle.

"Everything I own is inside it," Love told a National Air and Space
Museum photographer for a 1997 book about women pilots. "I honestly
thought by now I would be tired of that lifestyle and be ready to
settle down, but it hasn't happened."

She's had a couple scrapes: a brief marriage after college, a tangle
of power lines that dumped her crop duster upside-down in a cotton
field. Nothing she couldn't walk away from.

Love wasn't a daredevil child, but it was hard to keep her on the
ground once she picked up skydiving at the University of Kansas, said
her father, Loren Fred.

She once parachuted off a utility pole in Oklahoma, he recalled. She
also dropped tools from her helicopter to lumberjacks in Alaska, and
defied a chauvinist crop duster in Arizona.

"He wasn't going to hire a woman pilot, but he consented to put her in
a plane and in the most difficult positions and see if she couldn't
get out of them," Fred said. "She did, and she got the job."

Flying also eased the strain of scoliosis on her back, her father told
The Associated Press.

"That was a relief, really," he said.

After years of moving around the country, Love settled for a time in
Gainesville, Fla., to pursue a doctorate in special education at the
University of Florida. Three years ago, she gave up her studies and
returned home to Wichita to care for Fred, 95, when his health began
to fail.

Love just started ferrying planes again, commuting from Kansas to
Tampa whenever Hall had work for her. She wants to make enough money
so she could take time off this winter to finally finish her
dissertation, her father said.

Hall looks for a special kind of pilot for the international aircraft
delivery company he runs out of Tampa: those who can handle flying
alone nonstop for nearly a day at a time to remote air strips.

Love's independence makes her perfect for the job, Hall said.

"She didn't like to travel with people," he said. "When she didn't
call the other pilot after one hour, that's Lori. She didn't want to
talk to you."

They have worked together on and off since 1978, and she called him up
eight months ago looking for work ferrying aircraft again.

She asked for the long flights to India and Russia, even Afghanistan
if he'd let her. Hall trusts her as "a good stick."

On her last job, she had hopscotched from Tampa to Maine, the Azores,
the Canary Islands and then Ghana over eight days. She wanted to make
it to Cape Town, South Africa, in just one more jump after Ghana, but
Hall persuaded her to add the brief rest in Namibia. Heading there,
she disappeared.

Love lives for the adrenaline rush of flying, but she leaves nothing
to chance back on the ground. She always leaves a note that begins,
"In the event I don't come back...," on a counter in her apartment,
detailing instructions for taking care of her ailing father and
beloved 22-pound cat, Jeda, friends said.

"It was kind of a schoolteacher-y thing. She was very organized like
that," said Judi Ladd, a fellow UF graduate student in Gainesville who
has been entrusted with Love's cat.

Love is a vegetarian and dotes on animals. She volunteers to round up
feral cats in Wichita, where she had been piloting skydiving trips
over the past year.

"It was kind of interesting to see her around the airport. She looked
like somebody's grandmother more than a pilot extraordinaire," said
Martin Myrtle, owner of Wichita's Air Capital Drop Zone.

Love is pursuing her special education doctorate to advocate for the
severely handicapped, Ladd said.

She wasn't worried about the long trip, Ladd said.

"She had done that run at least once before," Ladd said. "To her, it
was pretty run-of-the-mill, just back and forth."

I hope Ms. Love makes it somehow. I once spent the afternoon with a
guy who ran a ferry service in the 1980s. He told me a story of
losing a pilot ferrying down to South Africa. The authorities of one
country called to tell him about the loss and the details of the
search. He told them not to bother. The authorities were stunned
calling him a heartless *******. He told them, "Look you are going to
search for the required time and never find him. Then one of two
things will happen. My pilot will walk out of the jungle on his own
in two or three weeks or no one will ever hear from him again". The
los pilot walked out of the jungle in two weeks.

John Dupre'

If you like ferry pilot adventure stories, this is a good read:

Air Vagabonds: Oceans, Airmen, and a Quest for Adventure by Vallone A

Dave

John wrote:

I hope Ms. Love makes it somehow. I once spent the afternoon with a
guy who ran a ferry service in the 1980s. He told me a story of
losing a pilot ferrying down to South Africa. The authorities of one
country called to tell him about the loss and the details of the
search. He told them not to bother. The authorities were stunned
calling him a heartless *******. He told them, "Look you are going to
search for the required time and never find him. Then one of two
things will happen. My pilot will walk out of the jungle on his own
in two or three weeks or no one will ever hear from him again". The
los pilot walked out of the jungle in two weeks.

I dunno. If it ws me, I would prefer a search.

John