REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, GRAND ISLAND - Loved ones of John Lawton will gaze heavenward on his 90th birthday Monday. Again and again and again. Otherwise, they might miss his Cessna 172 as he attempts to make 90 flying passages across the US-Canadian border.
"Somehow, I got a wild idea that I needed to do something different for my birthday," said Lawton, who has been a pilot for 56 years.
From the Ohio airport he bought following a career at the former Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory in Buffalo, Lawton set his sights on a watery stretch of the northern border in the Niagara River, north of Buffalo. The spot gives him a good view of the border, he said.
Lawton hopes for clear skies when he takes off from that same airport Monday and spends an estimated one to two hours at an altitude of around 3,500 feet, performing a series of tight, nearly aerobatic, figure-eight patterns in his four-seat airplane. Should the weather not cooperate on Monday, Lawton will take to the skies on the next possible day.
He has asked his non-pilot daughter, Brenda, along for the ride. Lawton's son, a pilot, will stay on the ground so no one can question who was really at the controls.
"I've been working on it and am trying to perfect the flying technique to do it," Lawton said by phone from his Westfield Township, Ohio, home. He has made practice runs over a roadway to get a feel for the turns and timing.
The Federal Aviation Administration's Buffalo approach control, which oversees the airspace at low altitudes, has signed off on the flight. Lawton also has gained support from fellow flier Claudia Childs. The former chief of detectives for the Buffalo Police Department opened Little Bird Airways after retiring, offering scenic flights over western New York.
Lawton got in touch with Childs after reading in a Buffalo News profile that she wants to fly on her 90th birthday — still 3 ½ decades away. If all goes as planned, Lawton will add to a long list of flying highlights accumulated over more than 6,000 hours of flying in more than 40 models of aircraft.
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