page_title: Jessica Dubroff
section_title: Crash
hierarchical_section_title: Jessica Dubroff / Crash
caption_attribution_description: Diagram showing crash site of Jessica Dubroff's plane
context_page_description: Jessica Whitney Dubroff was a seven-year-old American pilot trainee who died while attempting to become the youngest person to fly a light aircraft across the United States. On day two of her quest, the Cessna 177B Cardinal single-engine aircraft, piloted by her flight instructor, crashed during a rainstorm immediately after takeoff from Cheyenne Regional Airport in Cheyenne, Wyoming, killing Dubroff, her 57-year-old father, and her flight instructor.
  Dubroff was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, to Lisa Blair Hathaway and Lloyd Dubroff and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in California when she was four. Although billed by the media as a pilot, she was not legally able to be a pilot because of her age. Dubroff did not possess a medical certificate or a student pilot certificate, since they require a minimum age of 16 or a pilot certificate that requires a minimum age of 17, according to U.S. Federal Aviation Administration regulations. At the time of her trip, there was no record-keeping body that recognized any feats by underage pilots.
context_section_description: At 8:24 a.m. MDT, Reid's aircraft began its takeoff from Runway 30 to the northwest, in rain, strong gusty crosswinds and turbulence. According to witnesses, the plane lifted off and climbed slowly, with its nose high and its wings wobbling. It began a gradual right turn, and after reaching an altitude of a few hundred feet, the plane rolled out of its turn, then descended rapidly, crashing at a near-vertical angle into Kornegay Court, a street in a residential neighborhood. Dubroff, her father, and Reid were killed instantly by blunt force trauma sustained from impact forces. Reid, who was legally the pilot in command for all of Dubroff's flights, was allegedly manipulating the controls during this particular flight segment.
caption: Dubroff's final flight's path (red) from takeoff to crash (blue circle).
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