Teen pilot completes round-the-world feat

Beaming and waving her arms in the air, teenage pilot Zara Rutherford was euphoric Thursday after completing a solo, round-the-world flying odyssey with the dream of getting into the record books.

"It was very difficult but very rewarding," confessed the 19-year-old Belgian-British sensation who can claim to be the youngest woman to have circumnavigated the globe alone in a cockpit.

She touched down at an airfield outside the Belgian town of Kortrijk, welcomed by a crowd of journalists, well-wishers and family just over five months after she set off on 18 August, 2021.

"It's very strange being back here," she told a media conference, adding that, after an epic journey with stops in nearly 30 countries, she was looking forward to putting her feet up for a while in just one place.

"I'd like to do nothing next week," she laughed. "It was harder than I imagined." 

Rutherford -- whose both parents are pilots and her father flew for Britain's air force -- field questions in English, French and Dutch.

She explained that Russia's vast, frozen expanse of Siberia was the "scariest" leg of her journey: a place of overwhelming distance between habitations, and where the temperature fell below minus 30 degrees Celsius (-22 degrees Fahrenheit).

"I'd be going hundreds and hundreds of kilometres without seeing anything human -- I mean no electricity cables, no roads, no people -- and I thought 'if the engine stopped now I'd have a really big problem'," she said.

Navigating the world in a tiny, 325-kilogramme (717-pound) Shark UL single-propeller plane, loaned to her under a sponsorship deal, meant she had to skirt around clouds and could not fly at night.