17-year-old becomes World’s Youngest Pilot to fly Solo around the world

A Belgian-British teenager, Mack Rutherford has become the world’s youngest person to fly around the world all alone in a small aircraft, after he landed yesterday on an airstrip in Sofia, West of Bulgaria’s capital, where he started his adventure five months ago.

Wow! Who’s the teen prodigy?

17-year-old Mack Rutherford, born into a family of aviators, qualified for his pilot’s license at the age of 15 in 2020, making him the world’s youngest pilot at that time.  He began the flight around the world on March 23, traveling through 52 countries and covering five continents.

Where did the trip cover?

The flight took him through Africa and the gulf region to India, China, South Korea, and Japan. He crossed the northern pacific and landed after ten uninterrupted hours in the air on a volcanic island near the Bering Strait. From there, he flew to Alaska and down the West Coast of the United States to Mexico. He then headed north again along the U.S East Coast to Canada, and across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe.

According to a post on his Facebook page, the flight lasted 142 days, covering 33,631 miles (54,124km), spending a total of 221 hours in the air.

What’s special about his journey?

Rutherford’s successful trip around the world has earned him two Guinness world records of becoming the youngest person to fly around the world by himself, and also the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe in a microlight plane.