9 year old Flies Solo
- Thread starter mikea
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SkyHog
Touchdown! Greaser!
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Everything Offends Me
Great job. With all the talk in the other thread, I thought for sure he'd be doomed to some failure that only happens to young kids that fly aircraft.
Tome, for anyone that is curious, is just outside Los Lunas, NM, and is maybe 30-45 minute drive from Albuquerque.
Tome, for anyone that is curious, is just outside Los Lunas, NM, and is maybe 30-45 minute drive from Albuquerque.
gil_mor
Pre-takeoff checklist
Good for him!
"...his family and friends built the smaller balloon that is classified as an ultra-light aircraft..."
Ultra-light LTE. Wait, what?
"...his family and friends built the smaller balloon that is classified as an ultra-light aircraft..."
Ultra-light LTE. Wait, what?
Ghery
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Ghery Pettit
That has to be the key on how they got around the 14 year minimum age for a student pilot cert for a balloon.
John Baker
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I think it is just great, downright wonderful. That this could even take place in a country that is famous for it's helicopter parenting and it's nanny state control of it's children, it is a real milestone.
Kids do have brains, they can function without our monitoring every second of their lives. We have grown adults who function as children, just because we never let them grow up.
Perhaps this marks the beginning of changing attitudes, but probably not.
John
Kids do have brains, they can function without our monitoring every second of their lives. We have grown adults who function as children, just because we never let them grow up.
Perhaps this marks the beginning of changing attitudes, but probably not.
John
silver-eagle
En-Route
I wondered how he could solo at 9. And he has 30 hours dual. Not your average little leager.
Good for him. I just hope its because it is something HE wants. Not Mom or Dad.
Wouldn't that be nice?
Just don't let the kid ride the subway in Manhattan alone or you'll be accused of child abuse:
http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/2008/04/06/why-i-let-my-9-year-old-ride-the-subway-alone/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lenore-skenazy/more-from-americas-worst_b_96175.html
When I was 9 years old I used to walk or take bus a mile to church and school on my own and I made dinner for myself and my sister while Mom worked. Yeah. The neighbor, who was only across the hall, screamed at my Mom.
RJM62
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Geek on the Hill
Kudos to the young balloonist. It's good to know that not everyone thinks kids are helpless morons.
When I was 9 I used to ride the subway from Brooklyn to Queens to see the Mets play at Shea Stadium in Flushing -- sometimes with my 5-year-old brother in tow. No one thought anything strange about it. We were two kids going to watch a baseball game.
We also walked the roughly three-quarters of a mile to the Sanders Theater (craftily pocketing the money Mom had given us for bus fare) to see matinee double features and enjoy the air conditioning on hot summer days, or to Prospect Park to play baseball or just explore.
Fast forward now...
Yesterday, I asked my almost 13-year-old goddaughter to run to the store four blocks away to pick up a few things for supper. She looked at me aghast and said, "But that's too far!"
I thought she meant it was too far to walk, so I said, "Oh, stop. You're young. The exercise will do you good."
"No," she said, "I mean mom doesn't let me go that far by myself."
I was dumbfounded. At her age, I was taking Trailways buses a hundred miles Upstate to go on weekend camping trips with other kids.
So I debated the decision. My neighborhood in Queens is a lot safer a place than is her neighborhood in Philly, the store I was sending her to is four blocks away and owned by a very good friend of mine, and those four blocks are lined with at least a dozen other friends of mine.
So I sent her anyway.
When she returned, she was beaming with pride. I was actually a little sad, though. For a kid of nearly 13 years old, a four-block walk shouldn't be a developmental milestone.
We were much freer back in the "old days," and I think a lot more capable as a result. With so much more freedom, and with no cell phones to electronically tether us to our mothers, I think we became confident with the concept of navigating our way through life at a much younger age than most kids nowadays.
-Rich
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Everskyward
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Dunno, I see lots of kids taking the city busses in San Francisco. In fact I think that's the way most of them get to and from school. Lots of them walking the streets too. I know I did when I was a kid and only visiting. My mom even told me about a landmark large church which was a block from my aunt's house in case I got lost.