Captain James Anthony Tan (right), with Malaysian Ambassador Ahmad Jazri Mohammad Johar, in Doha, yesterday.
Doha: Malaysia’s Captain James Anthony Tan, set to become the youngest pilot to fly solo around the world in a single engine aircraft, stopped over in Doha yesterday for one night before flying off to Karachi today.
The expedition is on time, despite all the delays he has encountered so far, the 21-year-old, who is on a ‘1Malaysia Around The World’ (1RTW) expedition, said during a press briefing in Doha yesterday.
“I had a six-day delay in Vancouver because of a mechanical issue,” James said.
In total, he will spend 50 days and 96 hours flying, covering 21,900 nautical miles across the Northern hemisphere, visiting 20 countries with 30 scheduled stops. James, who started flying aged 18, is halfway through his expedition, in which he covered Jodan and Qatar from the Middle East.
“I chose Qatar over Oman and Bahrain,” he said.
James will clock over 110 flying hours when the expedition completes next week, which will see him enter the world record books and achieve five national level records in the Malaysia Book of records.
Speaking about some of the challenging times he faced during the expedition, James said that the longest he has travelled is seven hours. “You get fatigue easily because of lack of oxygen.”
The young pilot was born with dyslexia and had to leave conventional schooling at eight-years of age to enroll in a special programme for dyslexic children. Through this expedition, James said he wanted to inspire young people around the world.
“My goal is to empower the pioneering minds of youth by leading with passion and humility. I want to do this so that someone else can learn from it and do it better than me the next time.”
To date over 300 dyslexia associations around the world have been informed of this expedition.
James is flying solo in a single engine aircraft, a Cessna 210 Silver Eagle called ‘The Spirit of Malaysia’ in a historic flight circumnavigating the globe. To date, only 124 such flights have been recorded, making it scarcer than the number of space explorations ever made The Peninsula
