Tony Lands a Spot in Record Book : Youngest Global Pilot Welcomed at John Wayne Airport

Eleven-year-old Tony Aliengena landed his plane at John Wayne Airport on Saturday after a grueling and sometimes dangerous 21,567-mile odyssey, becoming the youngest pilot to circumnavigate the globe.

The fourth-grader from San Juan Capistrano performed a low fly-by, then brought the borrowed Cessna 210 Centurion to a stop at a red carpet on the same airstrip he and his family left June 5. The 2:28 p.m. arrival brought applause and cheers from a welcoming crowd of about 100 that had gathered on the balloon-festooned airstrip.

Completion of the seven-week voyage--dubbed Friendship Flight ’89 because of its international friendship theme--earned Tony recognition by the National Aeronautic Assn. as youngest pilot ever to fly around the world.

The trip drew criticism from some in aviation who said it was ridiculous to think an 11-year-old could fly around the world without extensive help from adults charting the course, monitoring the weather and filing flight plans. They said anyone could fly a plane with such help.

While Tony’s father--a certified pilot who sat next to Tony for the entire trip--never denied he helped his son, he said that the job of charting courses and filing flight plans falls upon the co-pilot even in a commercial airliner. Gary Aliengena, 39, said his son also proved his flying mettle on more than one occasion by piloting the aircraft manually when the autopilot failed and negotiating treacherous airport landings by himself.

Aliengena also said the trip had created warm memories that no one in his family will forget.

“This whole trip has been just fantastic,” he said. “There have been so many nice people in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. We had such a tremendous reception in the Soviet Union, and everyone was so nice. If I look back at all the smiling faces, it’s hard not to get choked up about it.”

During a half-hour welcoming ceremony on the airstrip at Martin Aviation on Saturday, Orange County Supervisor Thomas F. Riley presented Tony with a resolution of congratulations. Eddie Martin, the 87-year-old patriarch of Orange County aviation, welcomed the boy aviator with a smile and a hug.

“I’m real proud of you, real tickled to death,” said Martin, founder of the first airfield in the county.

Stepping on a box so he could see over a lectern, Tony answered reporters’ questions and said he had no immediate plans to match or surpass his around-the-world flight.

“I might fly pole to pole,” Tony said jokingly. What he most looked forward to doing now was seeing his dog, Rags, and riding his bike, he said.

Gary Aliengena introduced and thanked all 14 members of the entourage, which included a four-member film crew from Los Angeles, a chase plane pilot and a Soviet journalist, who made a speech in halting English.

“I think Tony is a brave pilot,” said Aleksie Grinevich, correspondent for the Moscow newspaper Soviet Culture. “He saw many cities (in the Soviet Union). He saw (that) our kids want to laugh and live in peace.”

Another member of the entourage, Gunter Hagen, an observer for the National Aviation Administration, verified Saturday that Tony remained in sole control of the aircraft, thus setting the round-the-world record he sought. Hagen said Tony never had to repeat a flight leg, as he did last year in his record-breaking flight as youngest pilot to cross the United States. Then, a flight instructor riding in the co-pilot’s seat grabbed the plane yoke during a Tennessee thunderstorm, forcing Tony to redo the leg.

Tony’s global flight also earned him recognition as the first private pilot to fly the breadth of the 7,000-mile Soviet Union. In so doing, Tony traveled for days over terrain so inaccessible that he was not within radar reach much of the time.

Tony’s arrival in Orange County was marred somewhat by the crash that took place Tuesday night off a gravel airstrip in the tiny Eskimo village of Golovin, Alaska, where Tony’s father had brought the entourage for a three-day fishing respite.

While ferrying Tony and six others out of the village that night, Aliengena lost control of the aircraft, and it veered off a 50-foot embankment down to a swamp below. The right wing caught fire on impact, but all eight escaped without serious injury.

The day after the crash, Aliengena borrowed another Cessna 210 Centurion from Alaskan businessman Ralph C. Meloon Jr.

The final leg of Tony’s long journey back home began in Seattle. Tony and chase pilot Lance Allyn of Hanford, Calif., who had ferried journalists and an independent film crew throughout the trip, at times flew side-by-side Saturday over the California desert as spirits rose and the homecoming neared.

On landing at John Wayne Airport, passengers in Allyn’s plane burst into applause when an air traffic controller was heard over the radio saying, “Welcome home, Tony.”

The night before the last leg home, Aliengena said the only unfinished business of the trip was to meet with President Bush to present a “friendship scroll” signed by thousands of children during the trip.

A similar scroll signed by thousands of U.S. children was presented to Soviet leaders in Moscow, although the Americans were disappointed when President Mikhail S. Gorbachev did not attend.

“We’ve been in contact with the White House, and (Rep.) Bob Dornan (R-Garden Grove) has told us that the President would like to meet with Tony to accept the friendship scroll,” Aliengena said. “We’re just hoping that it happens. We’re hoping that Tony won’t be disappointed again.”

The trip was filled with hardship and sometimes danger.

In the air, Tony faced ice storms so severe that in one instance, over Siberia, his plane almost stalled and crashed. A failed directional aid over the Rocky Mountains forced him to navigate with a less reliable compass. His plane’s autopilot broke down occasionally, forcing him into the tiring process of steering manually.

And his course routing took him over some of the Earth’s most treacherous flying terrain. First, there was the 2,500-mile crossing of the icy North Atlantic, where as many as a dozen small planes crash every year. And crossing the Soviet Union, Tony flew for days over forests so dense that he would have been hard pressed to find a landing strip in an emergency.

Soviet officials assigned two navigators to help the Americans find their way across the Siberian and Far East regions. The officials were especially worried about a 1,000-mile leg between the Soviet Far East cities of Magadan and Anadyr, within which American fliers vanished during World War II and were never found in the forests and mountains.

The Aliengena entourage, re-entering the United States at Nome, were so ecstatic that they paid little attention to the still-daunting task of flying through Alaska and then down the West Coast to home.

Alaska, with its huge mountain ranges and unpredictable weather, is considered such a potentially treacherous state for general aviation that local pilots say it is difficult for them to get insurance. Weather systems can move in and hover for days, as happened in the Golovin village during the group’s ill-fated fishing expedition.

Golovin stood out as a low point on the trip for reasons aside from the crash. Three members of the entourage suffered minor injuries there in a variety of accidents, the worst of which was a broken nose and torn lip suffered by Soviet journalist Grinevich when he fell from an off-road vehicle. He had to be airlifted by Aliengena to a hospital in Anchorage for emergency plastic surgery.

The high point of the trip, everyone agreed, was in the Soviet Pacific fishing village of Okhotsk, where Tony’s arrival was heralded as the biggest event in the village’s 350-year history. Hundreds of residents turned out, waving American flags, singing “America the Beautiful” and staring at the American boy who had traveled so far.

Tony responded by climbing to the top of a bus to wave to the crowd, looking like a politician on the campaign trail.

The high point for Tony was not in the air, nor in receptions such as this, which he encountered repeatedly throughout the Soviet Union. Instead, he found the most fun playing with local children.

Back home in Orange County, Tony looked forward to the prospect of playing again with his own friends. One of them, 10-year-old David Turley, was at the airport to welcome Tony.

“We’re gonna do lots of things,” David said, grinning. “Like build rockets!”