Belgian-British Zara Rutherford is the youngest woman to fly alone around the world | Belgium

A Belgian-British teenager has entered the record books by becoming the youngest woman to fly solo around the world.

Zara Rutherford, 19, touched down at Kortrijk-Wevelgem airport in Flanders shortly after 1pm local time on Thursday, completing a 52,000km (28,100 nautical mile) journey that spanned 31 countries on five continents.

“It’s really crazy. I haven’t fully processed it,” Rutherford, draped in British and Belgian flags, told reporters.

He said there were “unbelievable moments” but also moments when he feared for his life. “I would say the hardest part was flying over Siberia, because it was so cold. It was minus 35 degrees on the ground… If the engine stopped, I would be hours away from being rescued and I don’t know how long I could survive.”

Landing softly on the runway, she became the first woman to fly solo around the world in an ultralight aircraft and the first Belgian to fly solo around the world. Rutherford’s parents are pilots and began flying her on small planes when she was a little girl. At the age of 14, he was learning to fly and dreaming of a trip around the world.

“The dream was really to fly around the world. But I always thought it was impossible: it’s expensive, it’s dangerous, it’s complicated, it’s a logistical nightmare,” he said in a television interview earlier this month. “So I never thought twice about it. And then I was finishing school and I thought, if I’m going to do something crazy with my life, this is the perfect time to do it.”

On August 18 last year, he took off in his two-seater Shark Aero, one of the fastest light aircraft in the world, which can reach speeds of up to 300 km/h. Flying west, it stopped in the UK, Greenland, the Americas, and Russia, then traveled to Southeast Asia, northern India, the Middle East, and Egypt, and back to Europe.

Unable to fly at night or in the clouds, Rutherford could only fly during the day. She braved all climates, including conditions she had never been trained for in temperate Belgium. There were freezing temperatures in Greenland, Alaska and Russia, desert fog in Saudi Arabia, thunderstorms in the equator, wildfires in California and smog in India that reduced visibility.

Russia was his most difficult challenge, but also one of the most outstanding. “One of the most impressive moments was flying over Siberia, because it’s so remote and I don’t know if I’ll ever see it again,” he said. Saudi Arabia was also highlighted as “really beautiful, very diverse and the weather was great”.

A snowstorm grounded her in the northeastern Russian city of Magadan for a week. Extreme weather also forced a three-week stay in Ayan, a small town of 800 in the far east of the country with few English speakers and no Wi-Fi. Locals were “very friendly and willing to help,” he said.

Rutherford also had to navigate the rapidly changing Covid restrictions and bureaucracy. He canceled a stop in China after a government rule change meant he would have had to quarantine.

This turned into one of the scariest moments of the trip, when he had to navigate one of the world’s busiest aviation routes to reach South Korea while avoiding Chinese and North Korean airspace.

His journey from Mumbai to Dubai was a grueling eight-hour flight mostly over water, ending with a diversion to another airport 60 miles south of the Emirati city due to a rare storm.

Then there were the routine tasks. Christmas day in Singapore was spent dealing with a flat tire. When she was stuck in Alaska waiting for her Russian visa, she worked maintaining planes and applying to colleges.

Now back in Belgium, he plans to study electrical engineering and hopes to become an astronaut. Citing her inspirations as American aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart and Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the teenager said she hoped her trip would encourage more girls to pursue science and engineering.

“Growing up, I didn’t really see a lot of female pilots or computer scientists,” she said. “Those are two of my passions and it’s pretty daunting when there’s no one you can relate to who does any of those things.”

She said she hoped “other girls would see me and think, ‘I’d love to fly one day, too.'”