Alaina Kappner celebrated her 17th birthday in the sky as she aced her first solo flight for her pilot’s license.
LEBANON - Forget the usual teen birthday bash - you needed to look skyward to behold Alaina Kappner's "Soaring 17" birthday.
It started out as an exclusive party Thursday, with the only invitees being the Kings High School junior and veteran pilot John Lane, seated close in a single-engine plane, 2,500 feet up and buzzing through the clouds.
Once Alaina soared for more than hour as a solo pilot, she smoothly landed and taxied back to her family's hangar at the Warren County Airport.
As she rolled up, she was shocked to discover the hangar was now filled with more than a dozen family and friends screaming "happy birthday!"
As she stepped from her father's restored 1946 Aeronca Champ, Alaina's smile grew even wider as her test instructor Lane flashed a thumbs-up to everyone, signaling that she had successfully earned her pilot's license on the first day she was old enough to be eligible.
"Oh my gosh!" she exclaimed. "I saw everyone when I taxied up, and I was just blown away. I'm sure glad I didn't fail my pilot's test."
"Way to go, babe!" shouted her mother, Johanna, as she lined up to hug the newly certified aviator.
Everyone applauded as the teen basked in the feat's afterglow, all still lit by the final golden hues of a setting sun at the airport near Lebanon.
Planning the surprise birthday bash wasn't much of a leap of faith, said her father and fellow private pilot, Shawn Kappner.
Alaina is a top student at Kings and a quick study who has logged a long record of successfully tackling challenges, her father said.
"She has the right stuff and is way more advanced at flying than I was at her age," he said. "Her flying instructors tell me that, when they tell her something once, then it's a lock with her."
Lane, who founded Warren County Airport in 1956 and has trained and tested hundreds of young pilots, "rogered" that.
"It was a smooth flight, and she did really well," he said of their flight up to Moraine Airport south of Dayton, a flyover of the Springboro airport and return home. In between, she performed specific aerial maneuvers and navigation calculations required of all pilots.
As one of the nation's youngest female pilots to have attained a "sports pilot" license, Alaina is a rarity among the group of teenage pilots, most of whom are male.
Nationwide, only 11 percent of 72,280 student pilots are female.
It was an early morning flight near the Ohio River with her father earlier this year that gave Alaina the notion to soar.
Her father allowed her to hold the plane's wings level for a few seconds, and that was enough.
Alaina has long had an interest in birds and hopes to attend Cornell University to study ornithology. The sensation of flight intrigued her.
"Now I know what birds feel like," she recalled thinking.
Though she has no aspirations to become a commercial pilot or make a career in aviation, she's already game for new adventures.
"Next summer I'm going to try hang gliding, and after that I want to get my scuba diving license. I like adventure, and I want to try everything," Alaina said.
She chuckled and added: "I have a bucket list a mile long."
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