CNN 20: Jessica Dubroff Dies, April 17, 1996
BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, APRIL 17, 1996) NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCHOR: Jessica Dubroff was determined, she was confident, and she was just 7 years old -- too young to drive, but old enough to fly. What she really wanted to do was become the youngest person to fly across North America. Jessica had just taken off on the second day of this adventure when her plane crashed during a rain and hailstorm. It came down in a residential area just a half-mile from the Cheyenne, Wyoming Airport.</s>CARL ROCHELLE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They took off in the teeth of the storm and the airplane stalled and fell and crashed just down at the end of the runway, and Jessica Dubroff was killed, her father and the flight instructor were all killed in this accident. It turned out that when the investigators looked at it, that the airplane was overloaded and out of its flight envelope and should have never been taking off in that kind of situation. And she was supposed to fly the airplane, be at the controls all the way through this entire flight. This is what they were saying, that Jessica Dubroff was in control of the airplane, she was the person who was flying it across the country. How much she was actually flying the airplane, I don't know. The only people who were in the airplane, her father, her instructor, and Jessica Dubroff are the only ones who really know who was flying the airplane in those last minutes.