The incredible story of this 19-year-old who flew around the world in 155 days

TUNDRA TO TROPICS

Rutherford said in August that she was under pressure to reach northeastern Russia by late September to avoid the onset of bad weather. She ultimately crossed Siberia in early November – at a time when ground temperatures were as low as minus 31 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 35 Celsius).

On one flight over a remote area, she said she saw airfields where she could, in theory, have made an emergency landing. But they were covered in snow.

From Russia, where bad weather stranded her again for a couple of weeks, Rutherford had planned to cross into the Chinese mainland. So when China barred her from its airspace as a coronavirus protocol, she had to fly more than six hours over water toward South Korea.

At one point during that flight, menacing clouds threatened to nudge her path toward North Korea instead.

“Do I head back to Russia?” she said she asked herself. “Do I cut into North Korean airspace and risk having some trouble with their military?”

She was finally able to land in South Korea as planned, but her itinerary was soon upended again by a low-pressure system linked to a typhoon in the Philippines.

On the island of Borneo, she was grounded for several days by bad weather and faced the difficult choice of when to take off again. In the end, she crossed the tropical island but made an unscheduled landing at a domestic airfield on its southern tip. That was a safer bet than crossing the Java Sea – a notoriously dangerous place for planes – amid poor conditions.

A retired Malaysian fighter jet pilot who advised her on that Borneo leg, Lt Col John Sham, later said by telephone that he had been impressed by Rutherford’s poise, humility and instincts under very challenging circumstances.

“That is one fascinating, brilliant girl,” he said.

HOMESTRETCH

In late December, a flat tire that delayed Rutherford for a few days in Singapore was quickly eclipsed by a larger challenge: Smog had made the air quality so poor in some parts of South Asia that she could not cross the region safely by hugging the coasts of Bangladesh and India, as planned.

That required yet another workaround: A nearly 1,000-mile flight over a remote stretch of the Indian Ocean. (Sponsors and airports paid for the cost of the journey, wherever the route took her.)

“One thing I’ve learned on this trip – and I think this applies to everyone – is that you’re capable of more than you think you are,” Rutherford told reporters after crossing that ocean and landing in Sri Lanka in late December.

By that point in her journey, logistical hiccups were not just tolerated but expected. After a long flight over the Arabian Sea from Mumbai, India, Rutherford was unable to land in Dubai because of high winds. Last week, her plans for scooting across Europe were delayed by bad weather after she landed in Greece.

“I’m looking forward to my life not being weather,” she said in a telephone interview this month from Saudi Arabia.

Still, she said, she enjoyed taking to the skies and had been heartened to meet young women around the world who said she had inspired them to take up flying.

As for that pendant of flying wings that she had received from Pratt? It had been on her lapel ever since Goose Bay.

“It was a sign of good luck,” she said. “I think it worked.”

By Mike Ives © 2022 The New York Times

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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