17-year-old Cape native earns pilot's license

Lori Hampton recently enjoyed a $100 hamburger dinner. That's $95 to rent an airplane for an hour and instructor time, and $5 for the hamburger.

Hampton needed to complete a night flight to get her pilot's license. So, she flew from Atlanta, Ga., to Habersham on the South Carolina border for a hamburger.

She couldn't drive. She doesn't have a driver's license, she's in no hurry to get one.

She has her pilot's license.

On Feb. 15 Hampton turned 17, and three days later was at Andrews-Murphy Airport in western North Carolina.

"She took off as a student pilot and came down a licensed pilot," said her aunt, Melissa Hampton Perlman of Roswell, near Atlanta, who accompanied her to North Carolina.

Hampton, a junior at Roswell High School, as a private pilot, is qualified to fly single-engine planes, like the Cessna 172, Cessna 152 or low-wing Piper 140.

A native of Cape Girardeau, Hampton is the daughter of Matt Hampton of Atlanta and Linda Hampton of Cape Girardeau. She lives with her aunt in Roswell.

"A few years ago, when I was about 12, my grandmother, Ella-Dee Hampton, took me to an air show in Cape Girardeau," said Hampton. "The military jets and cargo planes were so cool inside, with all these awesome dials and buttons to punch to keep planes flying. I knew then that I wanted to be sitting in the pilot's seat."

Becoming a pilot is a big commitment.

Hampton spent her Christmas holiday break cramming for the Federal Aviation Administration Knowledge Exam, which consists of more than 700 questions.

She passed the exam.

Presidents Day, Feb. 15, she turned 17 and spent the next day, doing oral and flight exams with the FAA examiner. "I had spent two weeks totally focused on flight rules, regulations and maneuvers," she said.

Looking over her last year, she said, "I've had to accomplish a number of things" that included more than 10 hours of solo flying time, two hours of night flying, 100-mile and 200-mile cross-country solo trips and maneuvers that test math and science aptitude while maintaining the proper altitude and attitude.

Hampton has invested more than $8,000 and a year of weekends to complete ground school and flight school training at Randall Simmons Flight Training School.

Flying, at $100 an hour, is not cheap, Hampton admitted. She has used her afternoon job as a retail clerk to pay most of the costs.

"When you're roaring down the runway, climbing to 4,500 feet, soaring high in the sky, you get an awesome feeling of being truly in control of your dreams and destiny," she said. "The money spent is an investment in everything I want to be in the future."