Amelia Rose Earhart world flight

[Dan Swift]

Probably not new, but I've been following her for a while and it appears her flight is getting more attention. 
Not sure it qualifies as a 'reenactment' of the flight if it's not in an Electra. 

http://theeverygirl.com/feature/im-an-everygirl-amelia-earhart-flying-around-the-world

Interesting nevertheless....to me. 

[jgf1944]

Dan. That address did not open for me. Is it valid? J.G.F.

[Hector M Zapata]

http://theeverygirl.com/i%E2%80%99m-an-everygirl%E2%80%A6-my-name-is-amelia-earhart-and-i%E2%80%99m-flying-around-the-world

[Dan Swift]

Thanks Hector!
Mine didn't copy right for some reason. 

[Ric Gillespie]

I haven't been paying much attention to this. That Pilatus is a lot airplane.  As a former aviation risk manager I have some questions and I'm having a hard time finding the answers. 
•  Is she doing this flight solo?  If not, who and how many are are going with her?
•  What ratings does she hold and and how many total hours PIC does she have? 
•  How much turbine time does she have?

[Martin X. Moleski, SJ]

The Amelia Project: Amelia Earhart Reenactment website.

The Amelia Project: FAQ.

Will Amelia be piloting the Pilatus PC-12 NG 100% of the time? Yes, Amelia will fly in the left seat of the Pilatus PC-12 NG. Shane Jordan will fly right seat with Amelia, acting as co-pilot and co-adventurer. The live streaming component of the flight, the additional fuel tank on board the plane and the nature of the trip lend to two pilots being better than one. Amelia's main goal in this trip is to safely and successfully fly around the world. Additionally, Shane and Amelia are great friends, which ensures a lot of fun along the way.


I haven't been following this, either.  If I am reading the countdown timer on the website correctly, she is to take off 1 day, 22 hours, 21 minutes from now.  That would be Thursday, June 26, at 10 AM EDT, I believe.  (I don't trust my powers of addition and subtraction when it comes to times and dates, so please feel free to do the math yourself and post your results here; all are eligible for this contest because the prize has no cash value whatsoever.  You will feel like a winner.  "Virtue is its own reward!")

Her first leg is to England, it seems, if I understand the Live Tracker on the first page of the website.  If so, the "reenactment" is in principle, not in the flight plan.

[Monty Fowler]

I'm wishing her well, but I gotta' tell ya, the national buzz about this is almost non-existant. Total unlike the frenzy when Rutan and Yeager took off on their little round the world jaunt.

LTM, who finds dry paint just as interesting as no paint,
Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2189 ECSP

[Ric Gillespie]

Will Amelia be piloting the Pilatus PC-12 NG 100% of the time? Yes, Amelia will fly in the left seat of the Pilatus PC-12 NG. Shane Jordan will fly right seat with Amelia, acting as co-pilot and co-adventurer.

LOL!  Shane Jordan is NOT her co-pilot.  Shane Jordan is an instructor pilot.  He will be Pilot In Command at all times regardless of what seat he's sitting in. Amelia Rose Earhart's world flight is just a really long flying lesson.

Her first leg is to England, it seems, if I understand the Live Tracker on the first page of the website.  If so, the "reenactment" is in principle, not in the flight plan.

So the Earhart flight she's recreating is the 1928 Friendship flight.

[John Wallace]

She is not a student pilot but rather a licensed pilot with multiple ratings according to her website. I think she would need a single engine high performance sign-off for the Pilatus. Not sure how that means necessarily that Jordan would have to be Pilot in Command for whole flight.

[Ric Gillespie]

She is not a student pilot but rather a licensed pilot with multiple ratings according to her website.

She has a Private ticket.  It's not clear what "multiple ratings" she has.  Her cross country flight in a Cirrus was supposedly to "complete her hours for instrument training."  Was she alone on that flight? Did she ever get her Instrument Rating?

I think she would need a single engine high performance sign-off for the Pilatus.

That's right. The Pilatus PC-12 is a 10,000+ lb., 300 mph turboprop.  I can pretty much guarantee that she doesn't have a sign-off for that airplane.  For a pilot with her experience to get qualified would mean many hours of instruction.  How much do you suppose an hour of dual in a PC-12 goes for? Who's gonna pay for that if she's going to have an instructor with her anyway.

Not sure how that means necessarily that Jordan would have to be Pilot in Command for whole flight.

You can't log PIC time in an aircraft for which you are not rated.  If Amelia Rose Earhart is rated to fly the PC-12 solo she can agree with Jordan that she will be PIC for a given flight.  I think the chances that she is rated in the PC-12 are nil.

[John Wallace]

Thanks for the reply. I suspect she does have the sign off. According to her bio, she has already flown the same type Pilatus from Switzerland to Colorado. She was also getting her commercial rating in a Cessna 182 RG which is considered a high performance aircraft.

[JNev]

Who cares if she is or isn't qualified?  Like her name sake (to whom she is apparently not kin), the flight she is undertaking is fairly pointless, having  been done many time in similar or lesser equipment.

I see very little parallel to the original flight other than she seems to be inderested in having her name in the history books.  Charming though, I'll give her that...

[James G. Stoveken]

I'll give her credit for figuring out a way to get someone else to pay for her adventure.  And for having nice hair.

Transitioning from a Cessna 172 to a PC-12 is no different than going from gokarts on the boardwalk to Formula 1 cars at Monaco.  Happens all the time.  It's not like she's learning to land a taildragger or something.   :D

Excerpted from a blog that can be found here...

How many hours do you have in the cockpit?
I think I'm coming up on 400 now, so not much at all. There's no way that I could qualify to fly the PC-12 around the world by myself yet. That's why having Shane (Shane Jordan, Pilatus insturctor) there is a huge part of this.

I'll be doing probably 90 percent of the flying, but some of the legs are eight, nine hours long. So there are times when you just need to get up and stretch your legs.

Finally, when CNN asked about the cost, Amelia replied "Over the past year and a half, I would say close to $2 million is probably the total value of the trip."  If she really wanted to honor her namesake she should've underwritten Niku Vlll.  'Course we all know how that works out.  Ric would probably be logging more court time.   ;)

[Ric Gillespie]

She was also getting her commercial rating in a Cessna 182 RG which is considered a high performance aircraft.

I used to own a Cessna 182RG.  The go-cart/Formula analogy is a good one.

[JNev]

'Rose' has a surprising amount of frank humility for someone with this ambition, but '90%' might be an ambitious number. 

Hats off to her, but one continues to wonder, what is the point?  I thought she was not really kin to Earhart, but this kind of ambition must be born of DNA...  ::)

Well, an Earhart by any other name would smell as sweet... nothing like a name to petal (sic)...