PLAINFIELD: As plans for welcome-home celebrations shifted to mourning, family and friends defended the father-son team whose plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean, saying they had known the dangers when they set out to fly around the world while raising money to help build schools in father’s native Pakistan.

Crews recovered 17-year-old Haris’ body but were still searching for 58-year-old Babar Suleman on Wednesday. Their plane crashed on Tuesday en route from American Samoa to Honolulu.

The US Coast Guard said wreckage from the aeroplane piloted by Haris had been found. Spokesman Gene Maestas said portions of the single-engine plane’s fuselage were recovered on Wednesday night in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of American Samoa.

Babar Suleman had long dreamed of flying around the world. He and his son decided to make the adventure a fund-raiser for the Citizens Foundation, which has built 1,000 schools in Pakistan.

“It was an absolutely noble cause that they took this journey on, and they knew the dangers,” said family friend Azher Khan, who spoke during a news conference on Wednesday in Indiana, where the Sulemans lived.

Captain Haris Suleman: Tribute to a young hero

The father and son also hoped to set the record for the fastest circumnavigation around the world in a single-engine aeroplane with the youngest pilot in command to do so.

Haris knew that flying around the world carried risks. But like adventurers before him, he also believed dreams aren’t achieved without taking chances.

“Why does any explorer undertake the necessary risks in order to accomplish their dream? Because that person has a drive, they have a focus, and they have a need to explore that dream,” he wrote in a July 15 blog for The Huffington Post. The duo planned the trip carefully. They took classes in how to survive an ocean landing and packed a life raft with food and other supplies in case they had to bail out over water. They calculated their fuel needs and plotted their course, arranging stops in Europe, Africa, Asia and the South Pacific, before setting out on June 19.

“With a trip like this, there’s always a risk, and they did prepare for that risk,” Hiba Suleman said of her brother and father. “You can plan all you want, but sometimes things just don’t happen the way you planned.”

An inspector for the US Federal Aviation Administration in American Samoa will be looking into the cause of the accident.

Babar Suleman (L) and Haris Suleman (R). —Photo: Twitter

National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Terry Williams said the agency would work with local authorities on the investigation, but he couldn’t confirm if it would send an investigator too.

Babar had flown for more than a decade and had experience with emergency landings. In 2008, he landed his plane on an Indianapolis highway after its single engine died. His son had flown with him since the age of 8 and received his pilot’s licence and instrument rating in June. He emphasised preparations with his son, both before and during the journey. “Hope is never a good plan,” the elder Suleman told NBC News before setting off. “We have to plan for all kinds of eventualities.”

Babar Suleman expressed frustration with his son in a July 9 blog post chronicling their journey over Haris’ failure to know the exact location of an airport. “I have been harping on Haris that an instrument pilot always flies with precision, always maintains the centre line while taxiing, landing and take-off, never busts the assigned altitudes...and is always way ahead of the plane. Not knowing the exact location of the Walton airport was rather unsettling,” he wrote.

Published in Dawn, July 25th, 2014