Australian teen pilot stops in Las Vegas during flight around the world
Lachlan Smart is flying around the world to show big-dreaming young people that the sky isn’t the limit.
The 18-year-old from Queensland, Australia, took off July 4 for a seven-week, five-continent world tour. He’s flying solo in a single-engine Cirrus SR22, aiming to be the youngest person ever to make the globe-circling journey.
Smart’s journey, dubbed Wings Around the World, will include 25 legs and span about 28,000 miles; flights will be spaced two days apart.
According to a web itinerary, he followed his takeoff from Sunshine Beach outside Brisbane, with stops in Nadi, Fiji; Pago Pago, American Samoa; Christmas Island, Kiriba; Hilo, Hawaii; and Hollister, California. While in Hawaii, he delayed his journey to Hollister to avoid trouble from Hurricane Blas.
Smart landed in North Las Vegas on Thursday morning and departs Saturday, bound for Fredericksburg, Texas, and Niagara Falls, New York. If he completes his journey, Smart will supplant the previous youngest person to fly the globe solo, South Dakotan Matt Guthmiller, who accomplished the feat in 2014 at age 19 years, 7 months.
On Aug. 26, the projected end date of his journey, Smart will be 18 years, 7 months.
In a telephone interview Thursday, Smart said he’d planned his trip for 2½ years and raised $350,000 Australian (about $266,000 U.S.) to make the journey, landing corporate sponsorships and other help. He said he wasn’t pushed into the trip by peers or parents.
“It’s not something I’m doing just because I want to go around the world or because it would be fun,” he said. “I want to send a message to young people about setting and achieving goals.
“When I was in school with the Australian Air Force Cadets, I’d see my peers say, ‘I wish did this,’ or ‘I’d like to do this in the future,’” Smart said. “But there’s no reason you can’t achieve great things right now. I want to inspire young people to chase their dreams.”
Smart said flying always fascinated him; when he was 2, his mother took him to the airport to watch planes take off and land. It amazed him that an 8,000-pound machine could fly.
He took his first flying lesson at age 14, started flying seriously at 15, went solo at 16 and earned his pilot’s license at 17.
Smart said he’ll fly up to 14 hours at a stretch on his trek. He said he must watch the weather and steer around big storms he sees rising high into the sky. His support team feeds him weather data by satellite phone to help him skirt danger.
He said he eats carefully, avoiding overly sugary foods, and drinking just enough to stay hydrated. He can’t stop to use the bathroom; although there’s a portable toilet, he’ll use a bottle to relieve himself in a pinch. If his engine fails, he’ll use a backup system to restart it. If all else fails, he’ll pull a red lever in the cockpit that will open a parachute at the plane’s rear to help land the plane slowly and safely.
Smart said he feels energized by people he’s met on his journey, both in person and through social media. (His Twitter feed is at @WATW2016). Although there’s a record on the line and a schedule to keep, Smart said he feels no stress. To him, flying is freedom.
“When you’re worried, or having problems, and you go flying, everything on the ground gets much smaller as you get higher,” he said. “As you climb, you see the whole scheme of things, and what felt big doesn’t feel so big anymore. You realize you don’t really have a problem and you can work it out.”
Contact Matthew Crowley at mcrowley@reviewjournal.com. Follow @copyjockey on Twitter.
