There is something alluring about a solo circumnavigation of the globe. Like summiting Mount Everest or dog-sledding to the poles, flying alone around the world is the ultimate test of planning, skill, and endurance. It is old-world adventure—the stuff of dreams and fireside reading for all but a handful of daring souls.
According to Earthrounders.com, a register of pilots who have flown around the world in light aircraft, only 107 people have accomplished the feat solo. Two of them were teenagers, including MIT student Matt Guthmiller—who, in July 2014, at age 19, set the record for being the youngest pilot to complete the journey.
Guthmiller’s round-the-world story started at AOPA in 2013, when he read an AOPA Pilot article about then-20-year-old Jack Weigand setting the “youngest pilot” record. Then 18, Guthmiller said he knew instantly it was something he wanted to do. “Discovering a world record of such epic proportion that I could actually achieve was simultaneously inspiring, exhilarating, and liberating,” Guthmiller wrote in a March 2014 blog post. It “filled me with an immediate sense of purpose…and I induced that if I could do something like that, I could do anything.”
Let’s be honest: Guthmiller already believed that. This is a young man who began writing computer code in the fifth grade; launched and sold one of the first iPhone unlocking companies in seventh grade; and by high school was producing algorithms that could predict crude oil prices. This is someone who, when asked how a full-time MIT student has time to lay the groundwork for a flight around the world, replies, “Well, it took about a year to plan,” as if that explains everything.
His biggest challenge was finding an airplane. After nine months of research, he still had found no one willing to rent to a 500-hour teen pilot wanting to fly around the world. With just three months to go before departure, Guthmiller called Mike Borden of High Performance Aircraft in San Diego. Bingo! Borden not only was willing to lease his 1981 Beechcraft Bonanza A36 to Guthmiller, he did a complete avionics upgrade on it and allowed Guthmiller to replace four seats with extra fuel tanks, giving the airplane a 2,800-nm range.
On May 31, 2014, Guthmiller took off from El Cajon, California, in N367HP. Over the next six weeks, he made 23 stops in 15 different countries and covered more than 30,000 miles. Typically, he would spend a full day flying followed by two days at each destination—one for sightseeing and another for resting and preparing for the next leg of the trip. Upon landing back in El Cajon on July 14, he became the new record holder, replacing Australian Ryan Campbell and, before him, American Jack Weigand—who had inspired Guthmiller’s journey.
Guthmiller returned to MIT last fall walking a little taller. He had flown over vast seas—hours and hours with nothing but blue water below and blue skies above—to find, with pinpoint accuracy, island destinations in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. He had seen the pyramids of Egypt from his cockpit and gazed down on the engineering marvel of Bahrain’s manmade islands. He had navigated over nearly all the world’s continents and most of its oceans. And yet, ask him about the most memorable aspect of his trip and it is none of those things.
“The best part was the incredible people I met everywhere I went,” he says without hesitation. “People who helped me out in little ways, in big ways. People who knew other people in places I was going and would arrange for them to take me out to dinner or sightseeing.” In one of countless examples of generosity he encountered, a woman in the Philippines, with whom Guthmiller had communicated about stopping in Manila, quietly arranged sponsorship for the young aviator’s visit. Landing fees, fuel, hotel, meals, sightseeing—all were paid for by local groups.
Today, along with finishing his degree in electrical engineering and computer science, Guthmiller frequently speaks to groups to raise money for the $150,000 trip cost and to inspire others to pursue big goals. Who knows? Perhaps one day another young pilot will hear him speak or read this page and think: “I can do that!”
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