Nineteen-year-old Ryan Campbell has set a new record as the youngest person to fly solo around the world.
Landing on September 7 back in Wollongong, from where he had taken off 70 days before, Campbell flew the specially-modified Cirrus SR22 24,000nm via 34 enroute destinations in 15 countries, clocking up 200 flying hours.
“I’d come out of cloud and out of ice, stressed and worried, and immediately looked ahead and I just saw the tip of Greenland,” Campbell was reported as saying. “You know, I’d been over water for hours and here’s these massive brown, rugged mountains covered in snow and ice and glaciers.”
Campbell broke a record set earlier this year by a 21-year-old US pilot.