Belgian Zara Rutherford Decides to Fulfill Her Dream and Fly Around the World Solo

In the future, Zara wants to become an astronaut.

19-year-old Zara Rutherford could become the youngest woman to fly solo around the world. In mid-August she set off from Belgium and hopes to return by early November, having covered more than 50,000 km. In this way she wants to inspire girls and women to pursue science and aviation. 

Who Zara Is

Zara Rutherford was born into a Belgian-British family. Her mother is an amateur pilot, and her father is a professional who transports aircraft for clients around the world. 

Zara first sat in a cockpit as an infant. At 14 she learned to fly, and in 2020 she received her first license at the age of 18. The young woman has more than 80 officially registered flight hours and hundreds more unrecorded hours that she flew together with her father. 

Her longest flight was from Texas to Jordan; Zara had planned to fly on to India, but she had to return to school. Before enrolling at university, the young woman took a year off and decided to pursue her long-held dream of a round-the-world trip. 

Zara sold her car and found sponsors to cover the costs of the trip. One of the sponsors even provided her with an aircraft: the ultralight Shark UL, capable of speeds up to 300 km/h. It was fitted with additional radio and satellite communications, and an extra fuel tank was installed in place of the second seat. 

To offset her carbon footprint, the young woman transferred  €600 to tree-planting projects. 

Five Hours of Flying Per Day

The journey was originally scheduled to start on August 11, but it had to be postponed by a week in order to install an improved camera system on the aircraft. Zara took off from Kortrijk in Belgium and headed west. 

She has already visited the United Kingdom, Iceland, Greenland, Canada and the United States. On August 31 the pilot reached the British Virgin Islands, and after a rest she will head to South America, from where she will turn back to the United States. She will then fly to Indonesia, India and the Middle East, and return to Europe in early November. 

The young woman listens to podcasts so that she does not feel lonely or to calm down during difficult flights. A special team handles logistics and obtaining landing permissions, and her father stays in contact and gives advice when needed. 

Because of bad weather she had to deviate from her schedule several times, and one of the most difficult legs was the route from Iceland to Greenland. The young woman had to get around fog and thunderclouds when radio contact with the team was lost. 

What Comes Next

Zara Rutherford is using stops in various countries, in particular, to meet with politicians, diplomats, scientists, youth groups and schoolchildren. 

Zara Rutherford
pilot

My goal is to inspire girls and young women to pursue whatever interests them, even if those fields are traditionally considered male domains. 

Zara is collecting donations for two organizations: Girls Who Code, which seeks to increase the number of women in computer science, Dreams Soar, which helps women get an education and build careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. 

After her round-the-world journey, the young woman wants to enroll at university to study computer science or electrical engineering. She then hopes to fly into space: "Becoming an astronaut would be really amazing."