Pursuit of flight leads to cloud nine

It was 1949 and Allegra Osborne -- then Allegra Cripps -- was 16 years old and piloting a solo flight from Hartford, Conn., to Littleton, N.H., where one of her friends was working as a waitress at a resort. She got lost.

''I couldn't find the airport," the 71-year-old Haverhill resident recalled while passing time at the Lawrence Municipal Airport. But she did see some children playing in an open field, with cows nearby. She decided to use the cows as a wind gauge so she could determine how to land.

''You know, they always have their backs to the wind if it's windy, so I knew which way the wind was blowing, and I landed," she said.

When she was safely on the ground in the open field, the children ran to her plane. They gave her directions, and she took off again, following a road and landing a few miles away in an abandoned airfield.

That was only half the story. During her week stay with her friend, someone had ''borrowed" her plane for a pleasure flight. The plane was returned, but with less fuel, which became an issue. The abandoned airfield she had landed at had no gasoline for sale so she left with an inadequate fuel supply when she headed home.

''I knew you shouldn't put car gasoline in it [but] it was poor judgment on my part not to throw car gasoline in it [anyway] . . . but I was 16," she said. ''So, I was up at 5,000 feet down near White River Junction and . . . silence. And I saw the airport, and I had to land in a heavy crosswind."

She laughed as she added, ''They had to push me off the runway."

And what would she do now, as an instructor, if one of her students came to her with that story?

''I'd kill them," she laughed.

In the male-dominated world of flying, the toughest flight examiner in the region might be a woman.

''She's got a reputation in the Northeast as being a very diligent and conscientious flight examiner," said Boxford pilot Ron Gruner, one of her clients. ''She's got a reputation, frankly, of being quite tough. In my opinion, that's exactly what you want."

Today is National Aviation Day, and Osborne will be spending it like most days. ''Probably flying, if the weather's any good," she said.

Flying has been a major part of Osborne's life since her first ride in a plane 59 years ago. Women make up only 6 percent of the nearly 700,000 active pilots, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, but Osborne has carved out a reputation at airports in both Lawrence and Beverly.

''She's a bit of a legend here," said Gruner, who flies out of Lawrence. That reputation is not just for her tough standards as an instructor but also for her flying skills and long history in aviation.

By her own estimate, Osborne has logged more than 7,000 flight hours, including more than 4,000 as a flight instructor. She has flown around the country, and counts an airline transport pilot rating and a 2002 Civil Air Patrol Commander's Citation Award among her many achievements.

She's a mission pilot for the New Hampshire wing of the Civil Air Patrol, and flies charity missions for Angel Flight Northeast, which provides free medical flights. She has been teaching pilots for 38 years, and administering FAA exams for 15.

''I'm not tough," she said. ''I'm very thorough. I put a big emphasis on safety."

Osborne, whose father was a gardener who managed the estate of a Sturbridge millionaire, fell in love with flying at age 12, when her father allowed her to go up on a pleasure flight. ''I went on an acrobatic ride in a Taylorcraft [airplane]," she recalled. She wore a World War II parachute that was not built for the frame of a 12-year-old girl. ''If I'd ever had to jump out of the airplane, the chute would have left me."

Working with her father, she made 25 to 50 cents an hour, and spent it on $8 flight lessons her father arranged with the airport owner, a family friend. She became a certified pilot at age 17.

Osborne said might have chosen to be a pilot with an airline, but by the time airlines decided to accept female pilots, ''I was too old," she said.

''The only time I ran into the gender issue was, I used to fly with all the guys, and after I became a flight instructor, a rating they didn't have, I noticed a lot of them didn't want to play with me anymore," she said, laughing a little. ''I think that's because I was a woman. They might have done the same with a guy; I don't know."

Osborne, whose family moved to Ipswich in 1949, flew for many years from the Beverly Airport, until bringing her plane -- and her business -- to Lawrence in 1990. She married Phillip Osborne in 1954 and the couple moved to Haverhill in 1969. She began giving flying lessons in 1975, which helped finance her flying.

In 1988, after taking early retirement from her job as a contract administrator for General Electric in Lynn, she began teaching more. She became a flight examiner in 1989. ''The stress for women, working in management, is unreal," Osborne said.

As an instructor, Osborne maintains rigid standards, but applies the same discipline to herself. Pilot Dan Burkhard of Chelmsford, a former student, recalls waiting three hours to go on an instrument-training flight, as the cloud cover rose to 800 feet, which Osborne considered her own safety minimum for that type of flight.

''It was a lesson in personal discipline," Burkhard said. ''She's capable of flying down to the minimum and other people would have gone. But she stuck by her own rules. To me, that's an important aspect of flight safety, and she demonstrated that. She doesn't just impose it on students and test applicants; she applies it to herself."

Over the years, Osborne has lost clients because of her tough reputation. But there are good reasons to put safety first, she said.

About three years ago, a pilot asked if she would fly with him to Canada, Osborne said. On the day of the flight, the pilot called early in the morning, ready to go. But when Osborne checked the pilot's report of the weather, she was told that the ''ceiling" was only 100 feet and visibility was a quarter of a mile. She called the pilot back.

''I said, 'My suggestion to you is to go back to bed, because that's exactly where I'm going,' " she said.

Instead, the pilot took off. His plane crashed in the woods in Canada, barely missing a group of hunters and killing the pilot.

''I've learned to follow my intuition," she said, ''and it's saved my life at times."