Jolie Lucas

After 40 years of family flying, Lucas decided it was time to become a pilot. She received her primary training in a Cessna 152 in 2002
at the Ken Jernstedt Airfield (4S2) in Hood River, Oregon.

On August 24 of the following year, Lucas had been flying for only nine months and had only five hours of transition training in her father’s Mooney. She had been attending Airport Day at Hood River and had just departed Runway 25 with her father in the right seat. Her daughter, Candace, and her daughter’s boyfriend, Ryan, were in the rear seats and being taken back to school, the University of Oregon in Eugene.

During the straight-out departure and while climbing over rising terrain toward Mount Defiance, the Mooney’s Lycoming engine blew a cylinder and lost almost all power. With precious little altitude, there was no place to go but ahead and down. The beleaguered Mooney landed amid trees and brush, flipped upside down, and came to rest in a mud pond.

Lucas’ forced landing had been seen from the airport, explaining why first responders had arrived at the scene so rapidly. Lucas and her passengers were treated for minor injuries at a local hospital and released. She attributes the lack of serious injuries to the Mooney’s steel-tube roll cage that surrounds and protects cabin occupants. “That airplane took great care of us,” she said.

Like a rider getting back on a horse after being thrown, Lucas boarded her flying club’s Piper Warrior a week later—complete with a pair of black eyes from the accident—to restore confidence in her ability.

She replaced her father’s M20C with an M20E and arranged to obtain for her new airplane her father’s original N number, N6619U. She has had the airplane for 18 years and uses it for pleasure and flying to aviation events where she is a popular presenter.

In 2012 Lucas bought her miniature golden retriever, Mooney Sky Lucas, and she took the puppy for his first flight a week later. The dog flies with her almost everywhere.

BarrySchiff.com