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Teen pilot completes round-the-world feat
19-year-old pilot Zara Rutherford becomes the youngest woman ever to have flown around the world solo.
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Belgian-British teenage pilot Zara Rutherford, aboard her a Shark ultralight, reacts after landing back at the end of her solo round-the-world trip in her Belgian home town of Kortrijk on January 20, 2022. (AFP/John Thys)
B
eaming and waving her arms in the air, teenage pilot Zara Rutherford was euphoric Thursday after completing a solo, round-the-world flying odyssey with the dream of getting into the record books.
"It was very difficult but very rewarding," confessed the 19-year-old Belgian-British sensation who can claim to being the youngest woman to have circumnavigated the globe alone in a cockpit.
She touched down at an airfield outside the Belgian town of Kortrijk, welcomed by a crowd of journalists, well-wishers and family just over five months after she set off on 18 August, 2021.
"It's very strange being back here," she told a media conference, adding that, after an epic journey with stops in nearly 30 countries, she was looking forward to putting her feet up for a while in just one place.
"I'd like to do nothing next week," she laughed. "It was harder than I imagined."
Rutherford -- whose both parents are pilots and her father flew for Britain's air force -- field questions in English, French and Dutch.
She explained that Russia's vast, frozen expanse of Siberia was the "scariest" leg of her journey: a place of overwhelming distance between habitations, and where the temperature fell below minus 30 degrees Celsius (-22 degrees Fahrenheit).
