A Commentary on Jessica Dubroff

As a pilot and a father of a 7-year-old boy, I feel I am well qualified to discuss the case of Jessica Dubroff, the 7-year-old girl who died trying to set a record by flying across the country.

While the official cause of the accident has not been confirmed, witnesses and already-released evidence describe an airplane loaded to over gross weight, attempting to take off at a high angle of attack into a heavy rainstorm with high reported wind gusts at a high altitude airport. Any one of these factors could have caused the plane to crash; together, they made it inevitable. There was no compelling reason for them to take off at that time, even to set the record. They died of the most common ailment in flying: get-there-itis.

It's important to note that Jessica was, legally and morally, nothing but a passenger on her final flight. Forensic evidence implies that the flight instructor was physically flying the plane, but in any case, it was he who was the legal pilot, with the final authority to take off. He clearly should not have done so; perhaps he was caught up in the excitement that Jessica's father was generating. The entire "record" flight business was his idea, not Jessica's.

It's generally not a big deal for a qualified student pilot to make a cross-country flight after only 40 hours while sitting next to an instructor. But the physical and mental toll this would take on a 7-year-old had not been thought about by anyone. Still, I firmly believe that the ultimate cause of the accident was not the fact that a child was sitting in the left seat, but the rush to keep to a particular schedule despite the obvious weather problems.

Flying an airplane is nothing like driving a car. It would be suicide to allow a 7-year-old to drive a car down a two-lane road, for instance, where opposing traffic is scant inches away, closing at over 100 miles per hour. And yet, a light plane at cruise altitude is a mile or so from the nearest hard surface, giving several minutes, not seconds, to react. This is well within the ability of an astute 7-year-old to handle without danger, assuming, of course, that a properly trained and licensed pilot is also at the controls, ready to take over in case of emergency. This is not theoretical, as my own son proved at the age of 5. But the idea that a 7-year-old can actually be a pilot, making takeoffs and landings and judgement calls with full knowledge of the consequences thereof...no, I don't believe this is a reasonable thing.

The point many people have made, that the FAA should hold pilots to the same age requirements as drivers, sounds great, but as with most knee-jerk legislative proposals, is unnecessary: the minimum age for getting a pilot's license is already 16. No changes to the rules are necessary; there's just a limit to how far you can legislate common sense.
-- David Fiedler

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