Doing the Lindy

It was only 40 years ago that Charles A. Lindbergh did it, but now an average of nearly 24,000 people fly the Atlantic -- every day. Most of them are eating their way across on the 707s and DC-8s, but down below there is a growing little flock of private adventurers who get their vacation kicks by playing Lindy -- crossing the sea in a small plane with little but an extra load of gas and faith in their own skill. Last year about 300 private planes made the trip, and already in the first five months of this year, more than 200 have done it. Some of the flyers are pilots-for-pay who ferry small craft from U.S. manufacturers to European buyers, but many are just plain though well-fixed folks who fly for fun.

In their case, more than half the fun of travel is getting there. "Flying," says New York Film Producer Sidney Stiber, who pilots a Cessna 320, "gives you a combination of the satisfaction of intellectual accomplishment and the esthetics of flying itself." To New York Real Estate Broker Edward Cowen, such a trip offers "both pleasure and challenge," but there is no question in his mind that "the whole thing is dangerous." Says Earl Howard of Ames, Iowa, who, with his wife as copilot, flew his twin-engine Piper Aztec to a Rotary International convention in Nice this year: "If cost is a problem, I'd suggest forgetting a trip like this. But if you get as much satisfaction from it as we did, it's worth every cent of it."

Dead-Reckoning Navigator. The most serious source of danger is essentially the same in 1967 as it was in 1927: bad weather. On the favorite summertime route--from the U.S. to Sept lies, Canada to Goose Bay to Greenland to Iceland to Scotland--sudden storms blow up without warning; ice can form on wing surfaces at the drop of a single degree in temperature, and the approach to such key mid-flight havens as Greenland's fiord-fringed Narsarssuak airfield (known to thousands of World War II flyers as Bluie West One) is as often as not socked in blind by icy mists. Even though it is daylight almost round the clock along that route in summer, there are few landmarks to use as checkpoints. As Pilot Stiber says, "Any man who doesn't completely understand dead-reckoning navigation [using only charts and compass] had better stay home."

Of course there are plenty of post-Lindbergh improvements along the way. Whether a pilot takes the northern route or one of the less volatile southern routes (New York-Gander-Azores-Lisbon or New York-Bermuda-Azores-Lisbon), he can get essentially the same map and weather-chart information that airline pilots have. Beyond that, there are radar checks on his progress all along the route, chiefly from nine ocean vessels on station that send out radio beacons. Canadian officials refused for years to allow single-engine planes to begin transoceanic flights from their airfields because the ensuing air-sea rescue missions were costing Canada too much time and money. Now that the planes and pilots are better, the Canadians have relaxed their regulations, but they still insist that every small plane undergo a thorough pre-takeoff inspection at Moncton, N.B.

High Cost. Private flying across the Atlantic is by no means economical. A single-engine Piper Cherokee costs $8,500. To make a flight from, say, New York to London, a plane must have a complete high-frequency radio rig ($3,000 to buy, $300 a month to rent), an extra-large gas tank ($50) and survival gear, including life raft, jackets and flares ($35 a trip to rent). Then there are airport landing and service fees that range from a piddling $25 at Gander to a horrendous $300 at the air base at Sondre Strom, Greenland. There is insurance ($40 a month)--and most companies will not even issue a policy to a pilot unless he has at least 1,000 hours in-air experience and is fully qualified for instrument flight. One of the least costly items is fuel (less than $100 for a one-way flight).

But once a flying vacationer is willing to assume the high risks and costs, there is nothing to compare with the experience. Says Stockton, Calif., Industrialist Herman P. Miller, who has flown his Piper Aztec across both the Atlantic and the Pacific: "By the time I land, I know more about the terrain, the agriculture, the roads, the housing than most of the people who live there. I've got an education before I even touch the ground."

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