“I gave him advice on the route, on the flight, so that I could be useful to him,” said his sister Zara Rutherford, who completed the same journey prior to Mack. Source: Macksolo.
The 17-year-old has become the youngest person to fly solo around the world, ending his 142-day journey in Bulgaria.
Flying around the world to 52 countries took Belgian-British Mack a total of five months and one day in his Shark Aero Ultra-Light aircraft which he nicknamed sharky.
He left on March 23 and completed his journey on August 24.
At 17 years two months and two days old Mack gained two Guinness World Records for youngest person to fly around the world solo and youngest person to fly around the world solo in an Ultra-Light aircraft.
The previous record holder for youngest solo flight around the world belonged to his older sister Zara Rutherford, who was stripped of her title by one day.
Mack said it was a big achievement in his flying career.
“I have known for certain I wanted to fly since I was eleven, having flown hundreds of hours with my dad, who is a professional pilot. When I was fifteen and three months, I received my microlight pilot’s license making me at the time the youngest pilot in the world,” he said.
His journey started off in Sofia, Bulgaria and saw him fly over and stop on four continents including the US, Asia, Africa, and Europe while he also made stops in the UK.
While on his trip he detailed the challenges he came across. He said that he encountered monsoons, sandstorms, airport closures and many technical issues but said the craziest thing to happen was sleeping on an abandoned island in the middle of the Pacific while flying from Japan to Alaska.
“After 10 hours, I arrived at this small island, it was starting to get dark, so I landed and it was quite low cloud, it was raining, it was getting quite dark, no lights on the runway,” he said.
“It’s actually an uninhabited island, so if anything had gone wrong, I would be on my own, on that island, so really important that nothing went wrong. I landed there and had to sleep in a small shed on the side of the runway because it was completely abandoned for over 10 years.”
Mack travelled a total of 54,124km, spending 221 hours in the air.
