Youngest Flyer Set to Embark on Solo Flight Around the World

At just 23 years old, Barrington Irving strives to become the first African American and youngest person to fly solo around the world, planning to clock 130 hours of flight time during a four-continent sweep.

Irving plans to take off Friday at 10:30 a.m. Eastern from Miami in his single-engine aircraft. He is scheduled to stop in at the Atlantic Aviation at Republic Airport in Farmingdale, NY, to speak to students at the York College Aviation Institute on Monday, March 26, before jetting to Canada and then overseas.

Irving is following in the footsteps of other record-breaking flyers, including Amelia Earhart who set out for a flight around the world in June 1937, and Charles Lindbergh, who completed the first non-stop solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean in May 1927. More recently in 1986, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager completed the first non-stop, around-the-world flight. In March 2005, Steve Fossett became the first person to fly solo, non-stop around the globe without refueling.

The flight path of his "World Flight Adventure" is expected to take five to six weeks and would carry Irving to 23 locales, including the Azores, Spain, Greece, Egypt, Dubai, Hong Kong, Thailand, Taiwan and Japan before looping back to the United States by way of Alaska.

Barrington foresees two particularly challenging stints: crossing the Atlantic Ocean, which could take about 16 hours, and the trip from northern Japan to Alaska, where "the weather can change on you in 10 minutes like that," he said.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, and raised in inner-city Miami, Irving found his true calling at the age of 15 while working in his parents' bookstore where he met a customer who happened to be Jamaican airline pilot Captain Gary Robinson.

He was hooked by the next day when Robinson gave Irving a tour of the cockpit of a Boeing 777. Irving pursued flying lessons, enrolled in a community college to study aeronautics, and received a joint Air Force/Florida Memorial University Flight Awareness Scholarship so he could transfer to the university program. By age 19, Irving had earned his Private Pilot and Flight Instructor licenses and his Commercial and Instrument Ratings.

"When I was turned on to aviation, my life changed, and I basically had the opportunity to see another world that I probably never would've seen or considered," Irving told Aviation.com.

He added, "I never thought I could become a pilot. I thought you had to be a rocket scientist."

The upcoming flight is more than a dream come true. Irving says he hopes to inspire inner-city and minority youth to follow their dreams in the realm of aviation and aerospace careers. He named his Lancair Columbia 400 aircraft "Inspiration," because "that's that's what I want my historic venture to be for young people. They can look at me and realize that if I can achieve my dream, they can too," Irving said.

"I wish I had a chance to bring every child tracking the flight on my adventure, but I will be carrying all their hearts with me in the plane," Irving said. "This is what fuels me--having youth believe in what I can do, so they can also begin to believe in themselves."

For more information about the upcoming flight, visit the site of Irving's non-profit organization, Experience Aviation Inc.

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