Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 8, 1994 TAG: 9406080079
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: GLASGOW, SCOTLAND LENGTH: Medium
"I always thought it would be real hard and it was," she said. "A lot of people really helped me along the way. They taught me to fly; I didn't do it myself."
Accompanied by her flight instructor, the sixth-grader from Meadville, Pa., believes she is the youngest girl to pilot a plane to Europe.
The flight began Sunday in Augusta, Maine, and included stops in Newfoundland, Greenland and Iceland.
Van Meter said she had some difficulties on the last 800-mile leg from Reykjavik, Iceland, when ice formed on the wings and her flight instructor, Curt Arnspiger, advised her to go above the clouds to 13,500 feet. She flew most of the way between 3,000 and 7,000 feet.
"I started to feel very tired, dizzy, but we had to stay up that high to get rid of the ice. I had to make do with too little oxygen and I was glad Scotland wasn't so far away," she said.
Arnspiger said Van Meter was at the controls throughout the flight.
"I was her adviser and there for any unforeseen difficulties. But she did everything from start to finish," he said.
The flight path planned by the young pilot was similar to Amelia Earhart's 1932 solo flight across the Atlantic.
Vicki's father, Jim Van Meter, had said he planned to allow her a sip of champagne in Glasgow. But she arrived well before her parents, who took a commercial flight from Reykjavik.
Van Meter is thought to be the youngest person to attempt a trans-Atlantic flight, but there are few records on pilots under 16, who must fly with an instructor, said Dorothy Cochrane, curator of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum.
The Guinness Book of World Records and the National Aeronautics Association haven't recognized "youngest pilot" claims since the 1980s because a pilot must be 16 to get a license.
by CNB