In our school days, we get to know about extraordinary people who did some heroic things, such as Wright brothers, Uri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova. Now, there is another name that should go into that list: Zara Rutherford. She became the youngest woman to fly solo around the world on January 20, 2022.
The 19-year-old young British - Belgium aviator has achieved this astonishing feat thanks to the 325-kilogramme (717-pound) weight and 22 feet long Shark UL single-propellor plane with cruising speed reaching 300 km/h, manufactured in Slovakia.
She departed from Kortrijk-Wevelgem airport in western Belgium on August 18, 2021, and returned the same airport after 155 days on late January 20, completing an epic 41-country journey spanning over 52,000 kilometers (32,300 miles).
In the process, she broke two Guinness World Records: first, the youngest woman to fly solo around the world, and secondly, the first woman to circumnavigate the globe in a microlight aircraft. There, she beaten the record held by Afghan – American aviator Shaesta Waiz, who was 30 when she circumnavigated the globe in 2017. The youngest male aviator of the record belongs to Travis Ludlow in United Kingdom set at the age of 18.
Starting the journey
Zara Rutherford just completed high school and could have started college. Instead, she chose to fly more around the globe. She was sponsored by her former school in Hampshire, and Shark - the Slovakian manufacturer of her aircraft. And her parents were her backbone as they were pilots themselves — her mother is a recreational pilot while father, a British, is a professional aviator.
After leaving Belgium in August she told the internet: “My name is Zara Rutherford, a teenager. I’m attempting to fly solo around the world.”
Initially, she planned to complete the trip within three months, but it was delayed by two months due to the adverse weather and visa holdups in Russia - she spent a month stuck in Nome, Alaska, and 41 days in Russia.
Between life and death
Though it is appeared to be a sweetly ended journey, it is absolutely not. In August, when she was flying across the Atlantic Ocean, clouds forced her to fly as low as 1,500 feet. Yet, she could not fly through them as her a two-seater microlight plane was not certified to fly on instruments alone. Then, she lost the radio contact for several hours. At that time she landed in Greenland and even sent a two-word text message for her parents: “I’m alive”.
In Florida, USA, she had to maneuver around thunderstorms in the middle of hurricane season. Fortunately, Florida was one of her stop in the journey. When flying to Seattle in September, wildfire smoke seeped into her cockpit aircraft over Northern California, clouding her view and forcing her to turn around.
In North Carolina, as a result of fading daylight she made a sudden landing at a remote airfield. Her instruments also malfunctioned in New Mexico due to a blocked pitot tube. In addition to that, she also experienced an earthquake in her sixth-floor hotel room in Veracruz, Mexico.
In Nome, Alaska, she had to wait several days for her Russian visa to be renewed. Even with her new visa, it was a further three weeks before she could cross the Bering Strait, as bad weather plunged in. At this point of time, she felt intense pressure because she had planned to reach northeastern Russia by late September to avoid the onset of bad weather.
Ultimately, when she crossed Siberia in early November the ground temperatures were as low as minus 35 Celsius (minus 31 degrees Fahrenheit) and air temperatures were minus 20 Celsius.
However, before leaving, a mechanic came and blocked up some of the air intakes on her aircraft to keep the engine warm in the extreme cold. Up to that point, only three out of 39 flights had gone to the plan.
Once when she was flying over a remote area, she saw safe airfields for an emergency landing. But in practically, it was something covered in snow. From Russia, Rutherford planned to cross into the Chinese mainland. Yet, they barred from using their airspace as a coronavirus protocol. Then, only option was to fly more than six hours over water toward South Korea.
However, when menacing clouds threatened to nudge her path, she had to wonder about landing in North Korea. “Do I head back to Russia?” or “Do I cut into North Korean airspace and risk having some trouble with their military?” she asked herself. Anyhow, she was finally able to land in South Korea as planned.
In Borneo, she was grounded for several days by bad weather and faced the difficult choice of when to take off again. Though she was able to cross the tropical island, she had to make an unscheduled landing at a domestic airfield on its southern tip because crossing the Java Sea — a notoriously dangerous place for planes — was precarious.
According to The New York Times reporting, in late December, in Singapore, she faced two problems: first, a flat tire in her plane, and then, smog, which delayed her journey even more. Because of this she had to spend the Christmas in Singapore. The smog made the air quality so poor in some parts of South Asia that she could not cross the region safely by hugging the coasts of Bangladesh and India, as planned.
Arrival in Sri Lanka
As her 56th stop she arrived at the Ratmalana Airport on December 28 last year. She was welcomed by airport officials, and she even participated in a welcome ceremony in Colombo. In fact, she was relieved to reach Sri Lanka because after departing from the Indonesia she had to experience some adverse weather. In Colombo she took part a news briefing as well.
“One thing I’ve learned on this trip — and I think this applies to everyone — is that you’re capable of more than you think you are,” there she told reporters.
Returning home
On her return to Belgium on January 20, 2022, Rutherford, the former pupil of St Swithun’s School, Winchester, was greeted by her family, journalists and well-wishers. She was accompanied in her landing by four planes from the Belgian Red Devils aerobatic display team. The first thing she did after landing was wrapping herself in British and Belgian flags. She told reporters: “It’s just really crazy, I haven’t quite processed it.”
At the news conference in Belgium, she said, she was “so glad” to successfully end the journey.
“The hardest part was flying over Siberia - it was extremely cold and if the engine was to stall I’d be hours away from rescue. I’m not sure I would have survived,” she said. “I’d be going hundreds and hundreds of kilometres without seeing anything human - I mean no electricity cables, no roads, no people - and I thought ‘if the engine stopped now I’d have a really big problem’.”
Speaking about the earth quake experience in Veracruz, Mexico she revealed: “Suddenly the building started to sway. I don’t think I’ve ever run faster down the stairs. I was really expecting the most dangerous part of this trip to be in the air.”
Inspiring dream
Apart from holding Guinness World Records, she wanted to inspire other girls to get into STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) occupations through this journey. She was disappointed at the fact that just 5.1% of airline pilots around the globe are women, according to figures from the International Society of Women Airline Pilots. So she needed to inspire other girls to consider a career in aviation.
“Basically my dream is that in the future, if a girl wants to go into aviation or wants to go engineering, it’s not special,” she said. “It’s just like, ‘oh, cool, like, just another person who’s doing a cool thing with their life.’ But it doesn’t matter what gender they are.”
She also added at the news briefing: “It’s an easy thing to say, but just go for it. If you don’t try and see how high you can fly, then you’ll never know.”