A teenage aviator seeks to be the youngest woman to travel the world alone

Mike Ives

08/26/2021 10:17 AM

• Clarín.com

• The New York Times International Weekly

Updated 08/26/2021 10:17 AM

Zara Rutherford, 19, had been flying from Iceland to Greenland for about 20 minutes when her little plane lost radio contact with the outside world.

While flying about 1,500 feet above the Danish Strait, keeping low to avoid the clouds, he heard a podcast in which a

YouTube

celebrity

argued that the only certainty in life is death.

I said to myself, "Well that's what worries me," Rutherford said.

"It was pretty funny and it made me laugh. If I only knew."

Zara Rutherford, 19, a pilot who plans to become the youngest woman to go around the world alone.

Photo Beatrice De Smet via The New York Times.

Rutherford, who is Belgian and British, began her journey in Belgium last week and is scheduled to return there on November 3 after having flown over

52 countries

on five continents.

If she succeeds, she will surpass Shaesta Waiz and become the youngest woman to

circumnavigate the world alone

in a single-engine plane.

Travis Ludlow, a British aviator, did so in July at the age of 18.

Two months ago, Rutherford emailed Waiz, 34, who completed the trip in 2017, to ask if he was okay with challenging his record.

The answer was an enthusiastic yes.

"I told her that I am very proud of her for being so brave - and so young - to do this," Waiz said.

"That's the thing about records: They are made to be beaten."

Rutherford said she saw her own journey not only as a personal challenge, but also as a means of raising awareness about the

gender gap

in fields such as aviation, science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

During the trip, she has used social media to highlight the stories of

notable women in aviation

and other fields.

Their list includes Bessie Coleman, the first African-American woman in the United States to earn a pilot's license, and Lilian Bland, a British aviation pioneer who is considered the first woman to design, build and fly her own airplane.

Zara Rutherford, just before taking off from a Brussels airport on August 18, 2021..

Photo Thierry Centner via The New York Times.

Following his arrival in Iceland last week, Rutherford met with the country's Justice Minister Aslaug Arna Sigurbjornsdottir, 30, in an airport hangar.

"A great

example

for women, to see that we are capable of much more than what we sometimes think, believe or dream of!"

Rutherford wrote on Facebook.

As a child, Rutherford said, she didn't have many female role models.

People told him about

Amelia Earhart

, an American aviator who disappeared in 1937 while traveling around the world.

"But as an 8- or 9-year-old," Rutherford added, "she's not someone you really know or admire."

He found other role models closer to home.

His mother, Beatrice De Smet, is a recreational pilot, and his father, Sam Rutherford, is a professional who flies airplanes around the world for clients.

She has been with him for years, sometimes flying herself part of the way.

His longest trip so far was from

Texas to Jordan.

"Well, I was going to be from Texas to India, but I had to go back to school," he laughs in a phone interview from Greenland.

This time, crossing the Atlantic is just the beginning.

It will tackle the east coast of the United States before descending to Colombia via the British Virgin Islands.

It will then cross through Mexico, up the west coast of California and head north to Alaska, after a detour to Montana.

After crossing Russia through the Bering Strait, it will fly over China, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, before returning to Europe.

He said the only country he intentionally avoided was

North Korea.

The route is almost comical, in part, he said, because his two-seater plane is

incapable of flying long distances

over the oceans, but also because he likes the idea of ​​a great adventure.

"I could have shortened it, but I think it would have been pretty boring," he said.

Sponsors and airports take care of the cost of the trip, and a Slovak company, Shark Aero, provides the plane.

She also has support staff to manage landing rights and other logistical aspects, and her father has advised her from the ground on

technical aspects.

For example, after his radio went out during the trip to Greenland, he asked in a text message if he was able to climb through the holes in the clouds to an altitude where visibility was better.

Michael Fabry, a ferry pilot living in Belgium who happened to fly some 10,500 feet above Rutherford during part of his leg from Iceland to Greenland, said she would benefit greatly from having a

support crew

to help with the logistics, especially in Asia and the Middle East.

But it will inevitably run into high winds, he added, as well as clouds that it cannot pass through because its aircraft is not certified to fly only with instruments.

"That means you have to fly very low, and very low is not a safe condition to be on the water," Fabry, a former commercial pilot, said by phone.

"He has a bit of experience, but what he's doing is very, very, very brave, I have to say," he added.

"I'm a little worried. I'm sure the rest of the world is worried too."

Rutherford said he was under pressure to arrive in Russia at the end of September to avoid the arrival of bad weather, and that safety was his priority.

Before leaving, he practiced

escaping a plane

in an underwater simulator.

He finds flying over water stressful, he said, and listens to podcasts to calm his nerves.

When he landed in the wind in Greenland last week, after being without radio contact for most of the three-hour flight from Iceland, he sent his parents a two-word text message:

"I'm alive".

"It was a very long flight. I am very happy to be on the ground, to be honest," she said in an Instagram video, adding that at one point low cloud cover had forced her to fly just 600 feet above the ocean.

Bad weather delayed her for two days in Greenland, where she met with some NASA scientists.

But on Monday it completed its transatlantic journey by landing in Goose Bay (Canada).

The

fire

trucks on

the track greeted her with a salvo of water cannons.

On Thursday, Rutherford is scheduled to land at Kennedy International Airport in New York, an unusual destination for a plane just 20 feet long.

It was his father's idea;

thought it would be cool.

"It's definitely going to be the biggest airfield that I'm going to land on in my life," he said.

"So I'm very excited."

c.2021 The New York Times Company

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