Sam Rutherford, her former flight planning and logistics manager,revealed over a year ago, it all went wrong in Africa a couple of legs out of Cape Town. She did not have the ability to fly alone cross country.
One would have thought the Honourable Company of Air Pilots might have seen sense after the Chris Ford letter became public. However they were determined to rewrite the citation and put her on the same footing as Nick Peake.
Then there was the blatant attempt to sway the Light Aircraft Association vote and retain the Bill Woodham Navigation Award. This despite having others carry out all the flight planning and navigation for the Africa trip.
Her defence of her tactics was laughable in the Times.
She estimates she was alone in the aircraft for about 10 per cent of the time, with guest passengers for 20 per cent and with Ewald Gritsch, her Austrian engineer, for the rest.
“When we’re filming, flying low over places like the Bagan temples in Burma, it was Ewald’s job to look out for hazards, wires, cables, cell towers, temples. I was the one flying the plane.”
In all my years of flying fixed wing and helicopters I have never flown so low cross country that I needed
someone else to stop me hitting extremely low level obstructions below 100ft.
If she could not maintain a lookout or used others to plan the navigation how the hell was she trying to fly?
That same Times article contained this claim.
Even after flying around the world in her fifties, she said she had to laugh when she was described in one report as a “former waitress from Canada. I just love that. When Amy Johnson flew to Australia, you know what she was dubbed as? The typist from Hull. Here we go again.”
I might have missed something but I can no evidence of TCT flying a light aircraft around the world.
One other question remains unanswered.
Why have we never seen Tracey solo flying the Spirit of Artemis across the UK since the accident in accident in Arizona?
The fact remains Boeing lied in their press releases.