Young Pilots At Risk

The tragic death of Indiana teenager Haris Suleman after a crash off the coast of American Samoa (his copilot and father, Babar Suleman, was lost in the crash too) generated a great deal of media attention around the world, and unfortunately it was the worst kind. 

 

While we celebrate young people learning to fly and honing their skills, our policy here at Flying for at least the past two decades has been to not cover efforts by young people to set records based on being the youngest to fly a certain route or a certain kind of airplane. 

 

There are several important reasons on this issue. 

 

First, the validity of "youngest  to ..." records is questionable even when there's a definitive age for the operation to be flown. Haris Suleman was 17 and had recently earned his Private Pilot certificate. That age is the youngest possible for a private pilot seeking an around-the-world attempt. 

 

The question has to be raised: Is 17 too young for a pilot to attempt such a flight? On one's own? The answer is an emphatic "yes." With help? Well, getting help makes such attempts dubious to begin with. 

 

Haris had help from his father. The elder Suleman, according to an NBC story on the tragedy, had been a pilot for more than 10 years. How experienced a pilot he was after 10 years is hard to say. Experienced enough to fly around the world? Maybe, maybe not. 

 

In our opinion, it is almost impossible for a pilot at 17 years of age to have the judgment, experience or temperament to execute such a flight. As pilots know, the certificate is a piece of paper, a learner's permit that allows the possessor far greater privileges than one should immediately assume. With all this in mind, what does a record for a 17-year-old private pilot making a flight with a more experienced pilot really mean? We are at a loss to say. 

 

The other issue has to do with records for which there is no definitive age. Back in 1996 Lloyd Dubroff put together a "record" flight for his 7-year-old daughter Jessica in which she would be the youngest "pilot" to ever fly an airplane coast to coast across the United States. The two were killed along with Jessica's flight instructor Joe Reid in Cheyenne, Wyoming, after the Cardinal they were in crashed. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, Reid lost control of the airplane in heavy rain and turbulence. Jessica Dubroff, it should go without saying, was not a pilot but was merely a child along for what was clearly a publicity stunt gone horribly wrong. 

 

But despite the differences, there remains a marked similarity. In both cases, people outside of their comfort level, and possibly their abilities, set about to make a flight that had a great deal of risk associated with it. In both cases, the result was tragedy.

 

Encouraging such endeavors is fundamentally counter to our mission at Flying.