San Diego | Monday
THE grandson of US aviator Charles Lindbergh on Sunday flew out of a Californian airfield on the first leg of a duplication of his ancestor’s famous voyage 75 years ago, officials said.
Erik Lindbergh (37) took off from the airport named after his grandfather in his ”New Spirit of St. Louis” plane bound for the central US city of St. Louis, Missouri at the start of a journey that will end in Paris next month.
”He took off as scheduled and everything went off without a hitch,” said an operations official at Lindbergh Field in San Diego, from where Charles Lindbergh set off in May 1927 to become the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic.
The young Lindbergh’s state-of-the-art Lancair Columbia 300 is a far cry from the original ”Spirit of St. Louis,” a lumbering contraption made of wood, canvas and metal rods that his grandfather made history in.
Made of a carbon composite material and glass and equipped with a satellite telephone, global positioning satellite and advanced survival gear, the plane should complete the journey in half the time it took Charles, aides said.
While the original trip took a shuddering, nerve-wracking and exhausting 33,5 hours, the re-creation should take around 17 hours of flying time, flight director Gregg Maryniak said.
The pilot will follow the same route from San Diego’s Lindbergh Field to St. Louis before heading on to New York, then Europe.
Lindbergh was expected to leave St. Louis April 20 and then fly May 1 from Republic Field on Long Island, near New York, to Paris.
But there are worries about weather conditions including wind, ice and thunderstorms, he said, adding that he was hoping for tailwinds which could speed up the flight dramatically.
”This flight is all about a celebration of the past and hope for the future,” the 37-year-old Lindbergh said on Friday.
”As described by my grandfather, the beating of his heart was inseparable from the firing of the spark plugs in the engine,” he said.
Lindbergh said he hoped to inspire children and support various foundations, including the Arthritis Foundation.
He said his grandfather’s accomplishment ”truly changed the world. I’m still learning how both my grandparents affected people’s lives.”
The pilot’s grandmother was aviator and author Anne Morrow Lindbergh, who died last year at 94.
A documentary is being made about the flight and will be aired May 20 on US television, the diamond jubilee of the start of Charles Lindbergh’s voyage. – Sapa-AFP