Local Pilots to Fly Historic Planes to Film Premiere

Five pilots from western Pennsylvania and Ohio will be flying high at a movie premiere in the nation's capital.

The planes are Stearman biplanes. US Airways pilot Jack Roethlisberger of Beaver says if you could learn to fly one of them, you could fly just about any World War II aircraft.

He and the others are flying restored biplanes in for the Washington premiere of ``Legends of Flight,'' a 3-D IMAX film about aviation history, on Saturday at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. They will fly to Virginia the day before to meet up with four Virginia-based pilots of the plane before heading for the nation's capital.

Ken Miles, director of operations for the nonprofit Stow, Mass.-based Collings Foundation, which preserves and flies vintage planes, calls the Stearman ``iconic.'' After the war, many were auctioned off and used as crop-dusters, sport planes and on barnstorming tours. Miles says of the 10,000 planes built in the late 1930s and early '40s, more than 1,000 remain in use today.

For more information about the film, visit http://www.legendsofflightfilm.com/.