VideoWith a big smile and amid massive press interest and applause, the Belgian-British pilot Zara Rutherford (19) landed this afternoon at Kortrijk-Wevelgem airport in Belgium. After a five-month journey, flying over 52 countries, she is the youngest woman to ever fly around the world alone. She breaks the record with that. Her predecessor did it when she was thirty.
Alexander Haezebrouck
Latest update:
14:46
Zara Rutherford (19) from Sint-Genesius-Rode left on August 18 for her world record attempt. A world trip across 52 countries, from Greenland to America, Siberia, Japan and back to Europe. She covered a total of 52,080.3 kilometers in 200 flying hours and made 69 stops.
A journey that not without a fight went. Zara would normally be back in November. But she was delayed due to bad weather conditions. In November and October, for example, she was imprisoned in Alaska for more than a month. First because of the bad weather conditions, later because her visa for Russia had expired.
Last month, Zara received help from a ‘merciful’ KLM pilot when landing in South Korea. This ensured that she could contact air traffic control after she was unable to establish a connection with her own radio.
The bad weather conditions also haunted her until the last moment. Normally Zara would have set foot back on Belgian soil last Monday, but due to the bad weather conditions she was first stuck in Greece and later in the Czech Republic. Yesterday she was finally able to fly on to Frankfurt to complete the trip today.
Zara is also the first Belgian to fly solo around the world. With her record, Zara aims to encourage girls and young women to pursue their dreams and to overcome gender inequalities in aviation, science, technology and more.
Watch our most viewed news videos in the playlist below:
Free unlimited access to Showbytes? Which can!
Log in or create an account and never miss a thing from the stars.
#Zara #youngest #woman #fly #solo #world