A 19-year-old pilot hoping to be the youngest woman to fly solo around the world spent yesterday in Labrador, waiting out bad weather. Zara Rutherford, a British and Belgian citizen, landed Monday evening after completing her first solo transatlantic flight on a mission to reach 52 countries in three months.
Rutherford initially planned to leave Labrador for Montreal on Tuesday before continuing to New York, but unfavourable weather looked to keep her grounded until today (Wednesday).
In an interview, she said her mind played tricks on her as she flew over the vast Atlantic Ocean for hours on end, often rendering her unable to differentiate between the water and the sky.
Flying over Greenland was also a towering challenge, she said, with the high terrain and ferocious winds. “I think now I’ve really got the confidence to get me going.”
She says she knew the transatlantic portion of her journey would be difficult and says it taught her to trust her plane when she knew she couldn’t trust her eyes.
That plane is a tiny Shark Aero two-seat, tandem, ultralight single-engine aircraft that measures just under seven metres long with a wingspan of nearly eight metres, according to the manufacturer’s website. It weighs about 300 kg. when empty.
Rutherford made stops in the United Kingdom, Iceland, and Greenland before arriving in Labrador on Monday evening to a large, welcoming crowd at the Happy Valley-Goose Bay airport, prompting her to joke, “I had a lot of pressure on the landing; I had to make sure that the landing was good.”
The teen, whose parents are both pilots, began her globe-circling adventure on Aug. 18 from Belgium and she aims to end it sometime in November, when she’ll land on the exact spot from which she took off. She plans to stay with local families and in hotels along the way.
Rutherford, who dreams of being an astronaut, says she embarked on her quest to raise awareness and inspire more girls/women to enter aviation and related fields such science, engineering, and mathematics.
The current female record holder to circle the globe alone was 30 years of age.
