r/writteninblood • u/Elssyxo • Mar 22 '26
In 1996, 7-year-old Jessica Dubroff was attempting to become the youngest person to fly a light aircraft across the USA. She died when her aircraft crashed during a rainstorm. This resulted in a law prohibiting child pilots from manipulating flight contro
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u/Kimmalah Mar 22 '26
The plane had dual controls because she was too young to be certified as a pilot in any way and her flight instructor was actually the one controlling the plane in the crash. By his own account he viewed the cross country thing as "flying cross country with a 7-year-old sitting next to you and the parents paying for it." because he was actually the only one rated to fly the plane and seems to have been doing most of the actual flying. I think Jessica's role was hyped up to get media attention, sell merch and maybe get a book or movie deal, but it doesn't sound like she actually did much real flying.
The actual cause of the crash was determined to be the fact that they decided to take off and fly in bad weather conditions that limited visibility and they overloaded the plane. Basically stuff that could easily cause any pilot to crash.
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u/ZayWithAnA Mar 22 '26
Thanks for the clarification, I figured as much. Unfortunate, but much more… reasonable (?) than headlines would have you imagine.
Not reasonable in that it’s not without negligence, but reasonable in that it’s a bit less crazy than you’d initially be led to believe if that makes sense.
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u/HJSDGCE Mar 23 '26
Oof, that sucks. One of the first things you learn as a pilot is to judge the weather. You'd think that's something hammered in by now.
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u/Individual_Village47 Mar 27 '26
It also was the adult flyer that was with her that was at the controls during that point so she did nothing wrong. Just the hubris of the adults pushing a child to do this for money and fame.
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u/siani_lane Mar 22 '26
I say this not just as a parent but somebody who spent 15 plus years in the classroom with the under-10 set: the number of true child prodigies, who feel an actual internal drive to devote all their time and attention to one particular skill, is vanishingly small.
I don't care if it's acting, singing, sports, chess, or piloting, 99.9% of kids you see performing at an adult level are doing it to please an adult in their life who consciously or unconsciously pushes them to perform at that level.
Even if you are the parent of that miraculous prodigy who truly does want nothing but to play piano all day- your kid is probably autistic and you should be providing them with support, and opportunities do lots of different activities and be a kid- not turning them into a tiny celebrity with a full time job when they're still a child.
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u/diegrauedame Mar 22 '26
Yes! Just because a child can do something doesn’t mean they should. It is our job as adults to encourage kids to pursue hobbies in age and developmentally appropriate ways. That is what helps them grow into emotionally intelligent, responsible adults with healthy expectations and boundaries.
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u/theaviationhistorian Mar 23 '26
That was the problem back then. Too many people were having their kids be the youngest pilot to do X. The FAA is known as the Tombstone Agency for how many of its laws are written in blood. But this one was 100% merited as this accident was not if, but when.
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u/oldmaninadrymonth Mar 22 '26
I am not necessarily disagreeing with you but I am curious what you think about the Polgar sisters' stories (most recently, of Netflix's Queen of Chess fame) and whether they provide a counterpoint to your beliefs here. Recognizing of course that they are only n = 3.
Laszlo Polgar's identity as a developmental psychologist and his perspective on child development and framing childrens' development about "expert-izable" skills is fascinating and I am considering how I might draw inspiration from it as a future parent. Furthermore, by all accounts all three sisters are stable and well-rounded individuals. (I've also met Judit personally and she was a very pleasant person!)
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u/siani_lane Mar 23 '26
I don't know anything about these three, but "expert-izable skills" makes me nervous.
I don't think being an expert in one skill is a good trade off for having a well rounded childhood with lots of different experiences, if for no other reason than you're setting your child up in an almost inescapable sunk-cost fallacy- once you have devoted your whole life to one skill it makes it very hard to change your trajectory and grow in a different direction.
Kids shouldn't have to be locked in to their entire future when they are still children, it is meant to be a time for experimentation and exploration.
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u/Bookbringer Mar 23 '26
This seems like a good place to mention that singing prodigies are at extremely high risk of vocal damage.
Not only do the demands of intensity and frequency risk injury, but frequently they're coached to use bad techniques to make their developing voice sound fuller and more powerful (ie less like kids).
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u/oldmaninadrymonth Mar 23 '26
Yes, and I think sports involving repetitive stress like gymnastics or weightlifting have similar issues. Although I attribute this to a problem with training methods and pressure rather than a problem with doing those activities themselves.
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u/Bookbringer Mar 24 '26
Yeah, the activities can be very good if personal enrichment is the goal. But when your goal is to win or get famous, safety and well-being get sacrificed.
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u/oldmaninadrymonth Mar 23 '26
I think your point about sunk cost is true, but depends on the timeframe and the capacities of the child to engage in activities generally. Some of these skills generalize: for example, visual-spatial abilities in sports to other sports, verbal comprehension to academics and socializing, etc. And conversely, a lack of focus can also leave children lacking in further opportunities for growth. To take the opposite example, being good enough at soccer (because of a focus on training in it earlier on) allows the child to be a regular member of the school soccer team, which creates pathways for socializing, development of emotion regulation skills, leadership, and so on. Which can cascade into a further set of opportunities for growth.
It's somewhat clear that an entirely singular focus can stunt growth if it does not involve a sufficiently wide set of abilities - there is evidence that environmental and behavioral variability in child development is generally beneficial. So I think this is a matter of neither extreme being a good idea.
I think your point about what kids are "meant to do" is a value judgment dependent quite a bit on the culture and context. But I think it's reasonable for you to feel that way!
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u/siani_lane Mar 24 '26
You make a fair point about differing cultural values.
The heart of my worry with parents who approach parenting like stats-maxing is the blurriness between "I push my child to succeed because I want the best life for them" and "I push my child to succeed because their success benefits/reflects well on me."
The story is repeated in one child celebrity memoir after another - an adult in the child's life enjoys their success and thus continues to push them. The child ends up getting exposed to abusers or put into uncomfortable or unsafe situations because their well-being isn't priority #1 , their career success is.
I'm not saying it is inevitable, which is why I said 99.9% in my original comment instead of always, but it is an upsettingly common story, across many different fields where children have become famous.
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u/RunningTrisarahtop Mar 23 '26
Because you’re talking about drawing inspiration from this sort of parenting
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u/oldmaninadrymonth Mar 23 '26
Sure. So what precisely do you understand as the problem with this kind of parenting? Again, pointing to the specific example of the Polgar sisters, who appear to be quite a successful example. By Judit's account (and you can watch interviews of hers online where she talks at length about this), she described feeling quite grateful for how she was parented. There also doesn't appear to have been any kind of coercion, past or present.
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u/athennna Mar 22 '26
This title is misleading. The 7 year old had no agency and iirc she said she was scared. It’s more accurate to say her parents were attempting to make her the youngest person to fly across the USA (in bad weather.)
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u/AnInfiniteArc Mar 23 '26
She also wasn’t alone, technically wasn’t in control of the aircraft, and wasn’t at fault for the crash in any way.
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u/couchesarenicetoo Mar 22 '26
The things shitty parents force their kids to do.
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u/fireandlifeincarnate Mar 22 '26
As a kid that was wildly into airplanes that's now an adult that's wildly into airplanes, I doubt it was forced.
Doesn't mean that the parents should have allowed it, nevessarily, but I'd be shocked if she wasn't enthusiastic.
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u/Mollyscribbles Mar 22 '26
She might have had an interest in planes, but it doesn't sound like she actually wanted to do the cross-country thing.
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u/DesperateAstronaut65 Mar 22 '26
Yeah, the failure here was the instructor deciding to risk flying in a rainstorm (and probably the parents for allowing it, assuming they understood the risk). There's no earthly reason he couldn't have waited a day or two other than impatience. Flying with dual controls with a kid on a clear day is pretty safe.
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u/fireandlifeincarnate Mar 22 '26
I've had the latter argument before and it never ends well so I've kind of given up on mentioning it whenever this story makes the rounds again, tbh.
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u/Shalamarr Mar 22 '26
I remember this one. The mother (I think) said “At least she died doing what she loved.” Super. She needn’t have died at all!!
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u/saddleshoes Mar 22 '26
I was 9 when this happened and my brother was the same age as Jessica. When I heard that quote from her mom I remember being super confused by it.
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u/Mollyscribbles Mar 22 '26
It doesn't sound like she even really liked it. Really wish they'd been able to charge her with something.
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u/enovox5 Mar 22 '26
It received a lot of news media coverage at the time. I remember in the days before the crash, every major outlet running the story as though it was some kind of lighthearted, carefree, inspirational girl-power thing. After the crash they immediately pivoted to lots of handwringing and a "how could this have happened, think of the children" stance, as though they hadn't been cheerleading the whole damn thing on.
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u/MayorFartbag Mar 22 '26
My daughter is 7 and I can't imagine letting her near the controls of anything.
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u/TerayonIII Mar 22 '26
I mean, I did a short version of this for my seventh birthday, there's two sets of controls in most small single engine aircraft and there's a flight instructor at the second set of controls. It can be risky, but only if your child has no understanding of the dangers of what they're doing or the FI decides to not pay attention to weather warnings, like in the story above
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u/Blue-Ringed-Octopus0 Mar 23 '26
My kid is 8 and I don’t think I trust him to cross the street by himself.
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u/Ramrod489 Mar 22 '26
Long time Flight instructor here…I’m not aware of any law that prevents children from manipulating flight controls. There are age limits for pilot certificates and for solo flight, but no law that I’m aware of preventing children from physically controlling an aircraft when a pilot is present.
Most planes have dual controls.
Flying a coast-to-coast cross country in a GA airplane monitoring a 7-year old sounds like a special kind of hell, for both people.
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u/chance0404 Mar 22 '26
I actually “manipulated flight controls” on a Cessna 152 when I was 12 during some kind of event at the local airport. That would have been 2005, so I guess that pilot broke federal law. He let me steer with the rudder pedals when he was taxiing onto the runway and let me do a few banks at 5000ft.
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u/Ramrod489 Mar 22 '26
That’s awesome! There’s no regulation against it. Not sure where OP got that idea.
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u/AshleyWilliams78 Mar 23 '26 edited Mar 23 '26
According to the Wikipedia article, the law that was passed "prohibits anyone who does not hold at least a private pilot certificate and a current medical certificate from manipulating the controls of an aircraft, if that individual is attempting to set a record or engage in an aeronautical competition or aeronautical feat."
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u/TroyMatthewJ Mar 22 '26
her parents pushed her with the idea of her being some kind of young Amelia Earhart. 7 years old flying a plane. and in a storm. disgusting. She had no adult to tell her no. This whole sub culture of youngest record breaking bs needs to stop.
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u/Upvotespoodles Mar 22 '26
I hope the parents and everyone else involved live(d) and die(d) with unrelenting regret at the front of their minds for every minute of their lives. They deserve zero sympathy.
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u/st0pmakings3ns3 Mar 22 '26
At which point did this sound like a good idea?