ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, April 12, 1997 TAG: 9704140043
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: DAKAR, SENEGAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Finch and her navigator left Brazil Thursday night and journeyed to Dakar, Senegal.
A day late but not at all deterred, Texas pilot Linda Finch completed a 12 1/2-hour trans-Atlantic flight Friday, touching down in West Africa on her attempt to complete the round-the-world route of Amelia Earhart.
Finch and her navigator, Peter Cousins, left Natal, on Brazil's northeastern edge, on Thursday after being delayed a day by strong winds. The 2,000-mile overnight flight to Dakar was the longest leg of their journey so far.
A satellite computer installed in the plane allows Finch to post messages on a World Wide Web site that schoolchildren are using to follow the flight, learn about Earhart, and send messages back to Finch.
``I am on the way to Dakar, Senegal. I have been flying for almost five hours.... Everything is great. The weather is perfect,'' Finch, 46, said while flying over the Atlantic.
``The winds were too strong to leave as we had planned. ... That will give us one less day in Senegal. I had hoped to take a ferry to an island near Dakar and watch a dance there, but we won't have time. I will go to the market and visit with 100 children from a local school.''
She plans to leave for Las Palmas, Spain, today.
Finch, a San Antonio businesswoman and aviation historian, is flying a vintage Lockheed Electra 10E, a duplicate of the twin-engine propeller plane Earhart flew in 1937.
Finch left Oakland, Calif., on March 17, the same day Earhart took off in 1937. Her planned 2 1/2-month journey is an attempt to complete the trip that Earhart had hoped would make her the first pilot to circumnavigate the globe at its longest point, the equator.
Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, vanished near Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean after completing 22,000 miles of the planned 24,557-mile journey.
The World Flight 1997 website is: http://www.worldflight.org
LENGTH: Short : 48 linesby CNB