A young woman from Kortrijk, Belgium, has received recognition by the BC Aviation Council for her advocacy, and for being entered into the Guinness Book of World Records.
Zara Rutherford was recognized at the BC Aviation Council’s annual conference for breaking the record being the youngest female pilot to circumnavigate the globe, and for her passion for women’s empowerment and gender equality.
According to a media release, Rutherford comes from a family who has strong connections to the aviation community, with her parents both being pilots, and she says having that inspiration allowed her to accomplish something she never dreamed of.
“It has always been a dream of mine to fly around the world, I thought it would be the most amazing adventure,” she says. “I thought it was out of reach, until I graduated high school and thought ‘if I don’t change that mentality, nothing will happen’.”
At the time Rutherford was 19, which she says didn’t qualify her to be the youngest person, but it wasn’t until she started on her adventure when she found out this could be record-breaking.
“At the time the youngest woman was 30, and the youngest man was 18,” she says. “I figured we could do better than that, so let’s fill that gap.”
For Rutherford to qualify for the world record a very specific flight plan had to be filed and followed with points of departure and arrival being the exact opposite of each other on the globe, she says those points were Columbia, South America and Jakarta, Indonesia.
She says the flight itself brought challenges, including severe weather conditions, but she managed, and it made the rest of the trip easy, but the main hurdles were communication and filing flight plans with each nation.
“In places like Canada and the US flight plans are easy to file,” she says. “The main difference was places like Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and going around North Korea where that was very strict.
“Heavily militarized countries had a very strict route, including altitude, and communication procedures.”
Rutherford says the journey was one she’ll never forget, but when asked which country she found was the most memorable she had a hard time pinpointing just one.
“There’s a few countries that were just beautiful,” she says. “Canada and Alaska were some of those as well as Saudi Arabia.
Rutherford’s flight started on Jan. 20, 2022, and took 155 days to complete, and according to her website, she is hoping to reduce the gender gap in aviation and science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and encourage girls and women to pursue their dreams.
