17-year-old Mark Rutherford became today (Wednesday) the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe. in flight This evening he landed in Bulgaria, where he took off on a trip months ago. For 141 days, the Belgian Rutherford landed in 52 countries, covered over 54 thousand kilometers and celebrated his 17th birthday while in the air.
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Rutherford flew a “Shark” light aircraft, one of the fastest ultralight aircraft in the world. He took off 68 times during the journey and spent a total of 221 hours in the air. As a member of a family of pilots, he dreamed of flying from a young age and in 2020 he finally received his pilot’s license – at the age of only 15, which made him the youngest pilot in the world as of that year.
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Now that the impressive achievement is behind him, Mark declared that his next goal is to focus on his studies. “The next thing I’m going to do is go back to school and make up for the material I missed,” he said after landing. Mark’s older sister, Zara, also circled the world in an ultralight plane when she was only 19 years old and will have to accept her title as the second youngest person in the family to fly around the world.