COUNTYWIDE : Aussies, Residents on Flying Tour of U.S.

Five Ventura County residents and 55 Australians took off in 16 planes from Van Nuys Airport Saturday on a flying safari around the United States.

Their 30-day counterclockwise tour of the country will take them to 17 cities from Phoenix to Niagara Falls, N.Y., Australian pilot Dianne Cowley said.

Five women, including one grandmother, are among the pilots. And the passengers range from a 19-year-old Australian woman to a 75-year-old Australian man “who came along for the ride,” she said.

Cowley and many of the other Australians are members of the Royal Newcastle Aeroclub. Ventura resident Pat Quinn met them while visiting the club last year, and the idea of the tour was born, Cowley said.

The group will travel in single-engine planes, sightseeing along the way.

Because most of the group’s pilots do not have advanced pilots’ licenses, the FAA requires them to make “a visual flight-rules flight,” Cowley said.

“It means we must be able to maintain visual contact with the ground at all times,” she said. “We cannot fly in cloud. We cannot fly in a heavy rain. We cannot fly on our instruments wholly.”

The planes will fly mainly between 3,000 and 5,000 feet. Only when going over the Rocky Mountains will they go above 10,000 feet, she said.

Flying that low, “it’s amazing what you can see,” Cowley said.

The group rented all of the planes from airports in the Los Angeles area, she said.

The safari will return to Van Nuys Airport on Aug. 5. But don’t expect to see a fighter-pilot formation overhead.

The planes have to be too close together to fly in formation, Cowley said.

“It takes a lot more concentration. We’ll all fly in the same direction and try not to run into each other.”