Methinks something is a tad off here.
A Piper Cub is a high wing tricycle/fixed gear airplane. You lose a wheel, you don’t get to belly-skid upon landing. You get to risk a ground loop however. Your landing speed with flaps is gonna be around 40-45 KIAS, and you might get it down to 25-30 at touchdown. So while a groundlooped landing would be REALLY EXCITING, you and the aircraft would both likely be re-usable. Maybe some new fabric, paint, wheel axle/hub AND a sign-off. Maybe...
Also a Piper Cub is REALLY slow, if forgiving and gentle to fly. A cross-country flight would take a long time. A really long time.
I think it just might have been a DIFFERENT Piper aircraft. Maybe an Archer. Dunno.
Refreshing to see a media report on a teenager who actually did something brave—and not another gender dysphoric child being billed as “heroic” by the agenda driven left.
I Googled it, the pictures show a young white girl (sorta pretty) and a Piper Cherokee - not a Cub.
The technical reporting of today’s media really sucks. I think maybe the journalism education is focused more on leftist politics than good reporting.
Now just why the media would give a good report for a white racist girl is just beyond me.
I went off for college at 17. The girlfriend I met and dated was also 17. She was a young pilot with 110 hours solo. At spring break she ferried a new Cessna 172 Skyhawk with no instrumentation from Wichita back to her home in New Jersey. I rode along as we navigated VFR. I cold write a nice short story about that wild adventure with a beautiful young sweetheart.
This is an old story. A wheel fell off of a fixed gear aircraft on takeoff. She was a low time, already soloed student pilot. She landed perfectly and was not injured.
The lady was INSTANTLY dubbed “Captain Maggie”, and hundreds of people, including air force fighter pilots and airline pilots stating they’d fly with her anywhere, any time.
Seems like this happened about 5 years ago....
Is there a video?
“But on her first solo takeoff, out of a small airport in Massachusetts, something didn’t sound right. The plane had lost one of the landing gear wheels.”
Generally a good idea to make sure the wheels are attached before taking off in an airplane.
One other point. Whoever wrote that headline probably doesn’t know a stall warning horn from an alto saxophone because “solo cross-country” refers to a requirement specific to earning a private pilot’s certificate (14 CFR § 61.93). A trans-continental flight is something a bit more ambitious than that.
Which also explains why he wouldn’t know a high-wing, tail-dragging Cub from a low-wing, tricycle Cherokee/Archer/Warrior [pick one].