A 19-year-old pilot takes off for a solo world tour

(Wevelgem) A journey to be close to the stars and perhaps break a record: Zara Rutherford, a 19-year-old pilot, took off on Wednesday from Belgium in her ultralight two-seater plane, for the first leg of a round-the-world trip through 52 countries and five continents.

The intrepid Belgian-British pilot dreams of one day becoming an astronaut, but for now her goal is to be the youngest woman to circumnavigate the planet in the air alone.

His itinerary began with a brief crossing of the English Channel, from his birthplace of Kortrijk (in western Belgium) to the English coast. She then plans to chain the stages through oceans, deserts, forests, and the vast wilderness of Siberia.

Aboard her tiny propeller plane, a UL Shark UL microlight weighing just 325 pounds, she intends to avoid busy major airport hubs, with the exception of New York's JFK, and plans to touch down at smaller airports and airfields instead. to rest at night and refuel.

She has obtained authorization to fly over Greenland, Honduras, Saudi Arabia and Burma, and will be alone at the helm for all the flights, which will last five to six hours each time.

Zara Rutherford is not the youngest pilot to do a solo aerial world tour: an 18-year-old Briton, Travis Ludlow, did so in July. But she intends to be the youngest woman to accomplish this feat.

Beyond the record, she hopes to become a source of inspiration: "I really hope to encourage girls and young women to get into aviation, science, technology, engineering and mathematics", said she said before takeoff.

“Growing up, I didn't see a lot of women in those fields and that was pretty disheartening. So I hope to be able to change that,” she insists. His aerial odyssey can be followed on Rutherford's website, FlyZolo.com, as well as the TikTok platform.

"Reaching for the Stars"

The young woman has a satellite phone and a radio to communicate with the air traffic controllers of the countries punctuating her route, but in the cockpit, she will be alone with her music and her podcasts.

If no other plane will follow it to lend it reinforcement if necessary, its support team based in Belgium has carefully planned the adventure, in particular by obtaining in advance the necessary authorizations to cross the airspaces of about fifty countries. .

After Belgium and the British Isles, crossing the Atlantic will be her first big challenge, before her journey takes her to Siberia and Mongolia, sometimes very far from inhabited areas.

“I haven't slept very well, I'm quite nervous but I'm really excited. For now, I still find it hard to believe, I will start to realize when I land in the UK,” she told AFP.

At Kortrijk-Wevelgem airport, his family, his friends, the mayor of the city and a few journalists had gathered to witness the beginning of his adventure.

A poignant moment for his Belgian mother, Béatrice De Smet: “Obviously, I have a lot of conflicting emotions. I am a mom and my heart rushes when I see her leave like that, ”she slips.

At the same time, "I am extremely proud of the flight she will undertake, but also of the mission that she would like to achieve behind it, which is to encourage little girls to follow their dreams and reach for the stars. she says, as her daughter's small plane disappears into the gray skies of Flanders.

If all goes as planned, Zara Rutherford will be back in Belgium on November 4 – with another horizon: she wants to start studying engineering.