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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