…her grandfather gifted her a Cessna 150 airplane for her 10th birthday. Over the next few years, Pasterski got help from a mechanic and others in rebuilding the plane’s engine and constructing the frame for a new aircraft. (snopes)
OK, that makes more sense. She worked with professionals over a 4 year period, repurposing parts from an existing craft. Good (& rich) parents got her tutors. Let’s extend these opportunities to more kids, regardless of generational privilege.
It’s still a massive leg up the vast majority of people will never come close to. This is like the wealthy and peerage having private in-house tutors for their children in centuries past. Yeah, it’s geat this kid got her hands dirty and learned a bunch of cool stuff and turned it into personal success, but she started out on third base.
I think not. She problem solved through it and invented, in her garage, a metallic red paint to coat the custom design single engine airplane she built painstakingly piece by piece.
I’m not undercutting her achievements or intelligence. I’m applauding that she had this support. I am stating that this isn’t something that a child could do without some amount of generational wealth.
This says “at the age of 12, she purchased a Zenith CH 601XL kit aircraft of her own.”
I’m not sure how much either of these things cost, but I can tell you that these opportunities do not exist for any 10-12 year olds that I am exposed to.
See my other comment, but the situation was very different 20 years ago. Building a kit cost you a lot more in time than it did money. This is no longer the case.
Believe it or not, going back a few decades, personal flying (a real, certified, manufactured airplane, not a kit-built) was extremely middle-class attainable. I knew a couple of blue collar guys (would be age 70-80 now) who owned their own planes in the 80s.
Experimental aviation hung on a little longer and people were able to affordably build their own planes a couple decades after the price of a new Cessna or Piper got a bit steep. Like everything else, inflation, COVID, social media, and corporate greed ruined that too. Now Lycoming will charge you 50-100k for just an engine. Not including prop or actual plane. Even if you could build the plane part, the engine is unaffordable. Larger engines for a larger plane, or without a “builder” discount are even more eye-watering, they come with a years-long waitlist, and the quality control seems to actually be worse than historically. The price of engines has doubled in the last 5-6 years alone and they pump the price quarterly. Pure greed.
EDIT: to elucidate the greed part a bit more you can pin a ton of it on the rise of corporate jets, private equity rollups, opportunistic big-money flight schools, and market consolidation. If I want to build, buy, or rent a hangar at the local airport, I’m in competition with someone who can drop $5m on a turboprop and write it off as a business expense. These kinds of people aren’t really hobbyists, and most of them have a hired pilot. Airports and airport services managed exclusively by private for-profit companies are implementing service fees that are meaningless to rich people flying in to see a sporting event, but keep out the riffraff hobbyists in their little bug smashers. The pursuit of profit is essentially elbowing-out people who are passionate about flying.
The demand for single-engine trainers is insatiable because there was a gold rush post-COVID when influencers sold the fantasy of flying yourself around in the backcountry, or dropping your boring tech job to become a sexy airline pilot. The number of new pilots per year increased about 2.5x, and they are all sharing the pool of airplanes that pretty much stopped being made in large numbers in 1979. Now instead of a new Cessna costing $100k (what you would expect, indexed for inflation) they cost $500k. Because Textron (owns Cessna, Lycoming, Beech, and Pipestrel) is a publicly traded company that must make line go up forever. And because they would rather sell one Cessna a year for a billion dollars than have to run a production line for something they don’t care about. They prefer the margins and unit price on their bizjets.
Anyway, sorry for the rant, but I love general aviation flying and I hate what has happened to it.
A lot of these kit aircraft start pretty “cheap” in comparison to buying a fully functional airplane. The Zenith 650 looks like it runs about 40k to 50k $us. The Aquila A211 looks to run around 200k.
From looking into these kit planes before though, actually getting them to where they can be flown in the US airspace you’re looking at a similar price to buying a complete and certified plane. Usually around 25k to 50k cheaper, once its been inspected and prepped for flight.
I’m not sure how much either of these things cost, but I can tell you that these opportunities do not exist for any 10-12 year olds that I am exposed to.
Not anymore, but 20 years ago those things were extremely affordable. An old Cessna 150 was cheap as hell. The fact that her grandfather gifted it means he likely owned it for a long time and it would have been even cheaper going back a decade or two. I assume it was unairworthy or neglected meaning it would have had negligible residual value. Kits used to be cheap, too. Just a bunch of sheet aluminum with pre-drilled holes.
Like everything else, inflation, COVID, and social media ruined it. Building a kit in 2026 is extremely unaffordable for a middle class person.
I’m going to get into the weeds here as someone who has a lot of interest and experience with aviation:
It’s easy to verify that she never earned a pilot certificate using the public FAA airman registry. She’s listed as a student pilot.
The plane she’s pictured with elsewhere in this thread looks like a homebuilt Zenith 601 (could be a similar variant) which may have borrowed the engine from the Cessna 150 mentioned in the Snopes article. This airplane is “experimental amateur-built”, and building one is not a trivial amount of work. Notably, she does not have a repairman certificate for this plane (according to the airman registry), so either someone else is considered the primary builder (parent? grandparent?) or she never bothered to apply for the certificate. I was able to verify that her dad holds the repairman certificate. Not sure if that’s because she was a minor at the time of completion or not.
Could be her academic interests and career took off before she could finish doing those hobby things, but as someone involved in experimental aviation, it looks a lot like she helped dad or grandpa build a plane. Whether she’s intentionally taking credit for that, or being incorrectly assigned credit is a question I can’t answer.
EDIT: I found a youtube video of her talking about building the plane with photos of her working on it. It’s quite possible she did most or all of the work, but I’m basically certain she is not a licensed pilot. She did a student solo in the plane at 16 (must be 17 to get a license) and must have dropped out of flying sometime after that.
The airplane itself is easy to look up by the tail number: N5886Q. Flightaware suggests it hasn’t flown in 4.5 years, which is sadly typical of experimental airplanes. Many people love to build them but grow bored with flying them. The data could also be an error and it hasn’t flown in even longer than that. Maybe her dad aged out.
piefed.ee
OK, that makes more sense. She worked with professionals over a 4 year period, repurposing parts from an existing craft. Good (& rich) parents got her tutors. Let’s extend these opportunities to more kids, regardless of generational privilege.
plenty of rich kids grow up torturing puppies, I’m going to give her parents a big thumbs up on this one.
It’s still a massive leg up the vast majority of people will never come close to. This is like the wealthy and peerage having private in-house tutors for their children in centuries past. Yeah, it’s geat this kid got her hands dirty and learned a bunch of cool stuff and turned it into personal success, but she started out on third base.
She’s one of the giants future generations will stand on the shoulders of.
Air plane pics?
Somebody with a lot of money had a lot of faith in a teenager.
I think not. She problem solved through it and invented, in her garage, a metallic red paint to coat the custom design single engine airplane she built painstakingly piece by piece.
Its science.
With a box of scraps!
Engineering*
I’m not undercutting her achievements or intelligence. I’m applauding that she had this support. I am stating that this isn’t something that a child could do without some amount of generational wealth.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sabrina-pasterski-physics-girl/
This snopes article claims she was gifted a Cessna 150 for her tenth birthday.
https://midwestflyer.com/wondering-where-the-future-of-aviation-is-wonder-no-more-meet-ms-sabrina-gonzalez-pasterski/
This says “at the age of 12, she purchased a Zenith CH 601XL kit aircraft of her own.”
I’m not sure how much either of these things cost, but I can tell you that these opportunities do not exist for any 10-12 year olds that I am exposed to.
These opportunities dont exsist for 90% of the adult workforce.
See my other comment, but the situation was very different 20 years ago. Building a kit cost you a lot more in time than it did money. This is no longer the case.
Believe it or not, going back a few decades, personal flying (a real, certified, manufactured airplane, not a kit-built) was extremely middle-class attainable. I knew a couple of blue collar guys (would be age 70-80 now) who owned their own planes in the 80s.
Experimental aviation hung on a little longer and people were able to affordably build their own planes a couple decades after the price of a new Cessna or Piper got a bit steep. Like everything else, inflation, COVID, social media, and corporate greed ruined that too. Now Lycoming will charge you 50-100k for just an engine. Not including prop or actual plane. Even if you could build the plane part, the engine is unaffordable. Larger engines for a larger plane, or without a “builder” discount are even more eye-watering, they come with a years-long waitlist, and the quality control seems to actually be worse than historically. The price of engines has doubled in the last 5-6 years alone and they pump the price quarterly. Pure greed.
EDIT: to elucidate the greed part a bit more you can pin a ton of it on the rise of corporate jets, private equity rollups, opportunistic big-money flight schools, and market consolidation. If I want to build, buy, or rent a hangar at the local airport, I’m in competition with someone who can drop $5m on a turboprop and write it off as a business expense. These kinds of people aren’t really hobbyists, and most of them have a hired pilot. Airports and airport services managed exclusively by private for-profit companies are implementing service fees that are meaningless to rich people flying in to see a sporting event, but keep out the riffraff hobbyists in their little bug smashers. The pursuit of profit is essentially elbowing-out people who are passionate about flying.
The demand for single-engine trainers is insatiable because there was a gold rush post-COVID when influencers sold the fantasy of flying yourself around in the backcountry, or dropping your boring tech job to become a sexy airline pilot. The number of new pilots per year increased about 2.5x, and they are all sharing the pool of airplanes that pretty much stopped being made in large numbers in 1979. Now instead of a new Cessna costing $100k (what you would expect, indexed for inflation) they cost $500k. Because Textron (owns Cessna, Lycoming, Beech, and Pipestrel) is a publicly traded company that must make line go up forever. And because they would rather sell one Cessna a year for a billion dollars than have to run a production line for something they don’t care about. They prefer the margins and unit price on their bizjets.
Anyway, sorry for the rant, but I love general aviation flying and I hate what has happened to it.
A lot of these kit aircraft start pretty “cheap” in comparison to buying a fully functional airplane. The Zenith 650 looks like it runs about 40k to 50k $us. The Aquila A211 looks to run around 200k.
From looking into these kit planes before though, actually getting them to where they can be flown in the US airspace you’re looking at a similar price to buying a complete and certified plane. Usually around 25k to 50k cheaper, once its been inspected and prepped for flight.
Not anymore, but 20 years ago those things were extremely affordable. An old Cessna 150 was cheap as hell. The fact that her grandfather gifted it means he likely owned it for a long time and it would have been even cheaper going back a decade or two. I assume it was unairworthy or neglected meaning it would have had negligible residual value. Kits used to be cheap, too. Just a bunch of sheet aluminum with pre-drilled holes.
Like everything else, inflation, COVID, and social media ruined it. Building a kit in 2026 is extremely unaffordable for a middle class person.
You know she’s smart because she told bozos to fuck off. Kinda buried the lede behind all that science stuff.
The other stuff showed how smart she is. Telling bezos to fuck off shows that she’s also wise.
I can’t meet her at 14 if she’s 32 now – unless she’s really good at theoretical physics.
I think that moves to the realm applied physics.
eeeeh, only if it works.
I’m going to get into the weeds here as someone who has a lot of interest and experience with aviation:
It’s easy to verify that she never earned a pilot certificate using the public FAA airman registry. She’s listed as a student pilot.
The plane she’s pictured with elsewhere in this thread looks like a homebuilt Zenith 601 (could be a similar variant) which may have borrowed the engine from the Cessna 150 mentioned in the Snopes article. This airplane is “experimental amateur-built”, and building one is not a trivial amount of work. Notably, she does not have a repairman certificate for this plane (according to the airman registry),
so either someone else is considered the primary builder (parent? grandparent?) or she never bothered to apply for the certificate.I was able to verify that her dad holds the repairman certificate. Not sure if that’s because she was a minor at the time of completion or not.Could be her academic interests and career took off before she could finish doing those hobby things,
but as someone involved in experimental aviation, it looks a lot like she helped dad or grandpa build a plane. Whether she’s intentionally taking credit for that, or being incorrectly assigned credit is a question I can’t answer.EDIT: I found a youtube video of her talking about building the plane with photos of her working on it. It’s quite possible she did most or all of the work, but I’m basically certain she is not a licensed pilot. She did a student solo in the plane at 16 (must be 17 to get a license) and must have dropped out of flying sometime after that.
The airplane itself is easy to look up by the tail number: N5886Q. Flightaware suggests it hasn’t flown in 4.5 years, which is sadly typical of experimental airplanes. Many people love to build them but grow bored with flying them. The data could also be an error and it hasn’t flown in even longer than that. Maybe her dad aged out.