IIt should have been perfect flying weather when Zara Rutherford left Palo Alto, California for Seattle, a month after her bid to become the youngest woman to fly solo around the world. But while skies were clear, wildfires raged across the ground.
He tried to avoid the towering plumes of acrid smoke by climbing to 12,000 feet, but to no avail. “I couldn’t see in front of me,” he said. “It was all kinds of brown, smoky, orange, dirty. I could also smell the smoke, which was quite unpleasant.”
By the time she was engulfed in smoke and could no longer see the ground from her plane, she realized she would have to turn back. He was only in the smoke for a few seconds, but it felt “like an eternity, especially since the turbulence went from zero to full so quickly.”
The incident was just one of many heart-stopping moments on Rutherford’s unprecedented journey, which spanned 31 countries on five continents and ended Thursday.
“I’m really happy. I think it’s finally working,” the 19-year-old said in a Zoom interview from her home outside Brussels. Phones were ringing and Rutherford’s cats were meowing when she was momentarily interrupted by a gray tabby cat. luxuriously furry that hogged the screen.
Domestic calm was a far cry from the Belgian-British teenager’s 155-day odyssey, which traversed some of the world’s coldest, smoggiest and wettest places, all experienced in a two-seater Shark ultralight, a plane as easy to maneuver that one person can push it along the track.
The flip side of the plane’s ultralight carbon fiber coin is its susceptibility to severe turbulence. Flying over the Bulgarian mountains a week ago, the turbulence was so severe that it triggered a G-force warning that Rutherford described in his typically low-key way as “very uncomfortable”. Even on the last jump from Frankfurt to Kortrijk in western Belgium on Thursday, he hit his head on the canopy.
Its journey began in August in Belgium, from where it headed west over the United Kingdom to the Americas through Greenland and then to Russia, then to Southeast Asia, turning north over India, the Middle East, and finally from return to Europe.
Rutherford, who was first taken into small planes by her pilot parents when she was a little girl, earned her flight license at age 17. But temperate Belgium had not prepared her for the extreme conditions she would encounter on her epic journey.
One of his most daunting tasks was flying over Siberia. “It’s beautiful but intimidating… The ocean is frozen this time of year. There are no trees, there are no people, there are no roads, there are no power lines. In terms of wild nature, there is nothing like it.”
The flight over the snowy vastness was stressful because he knew that if his engine failed, there would be a long wait for rescue. “Spending hours in -35C, I don’t know if that’s really feasible, and I didn’t have the survival gear to spend hours and hours outside.”
Unable to fly at night or in the clouds, he often ran against time and weather. Instead of thinking about what could happen, he focused on flying his plane: “It’s about living in the present; the next five, 10 minutes, instead of the next four hours, because in four hours the weather can change”.
The music helped her stay focused in the cabin. It kicked off with “a huge playlist” of pop songs from 2010 to 2019. Its tunes also eased the culture shock of being away from home. “It was good to have things that I was familiar with, because especially in Siberia, Saudi Arabia and most of Asia, everything was very different, the culture, the weather, the people, everyone was very generous and kind, but I felt that way. . so far from home, so having music to sing along to was really helpful.”
Avoiding bad weather meant that he often had to change his plans. An electrical storm prevented him from landing in Jakarta, forcing him to divert to the small domestic airport in Ketapang, on the island of Borneo. As the terminal did not have an immigration office, he had to stay at the airport for two days – “people were very generous [and] I got really good local food.”
The young pilot is aware of the environmental impact of her trip. He had hoped to make the trip in an electric plane, but found that was not possible and said his plane used much less fuel than a commercial airliner. “For my entire trip around the world it uses the same amount of fuel as a Boeing in about 10 minutes, so although it has a negative impact, it is not as big as it seems at first glance. And it was also doing some carbon offsetting.”
Rutherford, who plans to study electrical engineering in the UK or the US, thinks he could play a part in making aviation greener. “Right now obviously aviation is not sustainable at all, but it’s heading in that direction.”
More immediately, she hopes her trip will inspire women and girls to fly planes and study science, engineering, technology and math. “Aviation is a very big industry and it’s not going anywhere. As we move towards electric planes, we will continue to need pilots, so I hope to get more women involved.”
www.theguardian.com
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism