Ibra wrote:
my gliding club when some 17yo chap from the club gets a Diamond distance or height in expedition to LaCerdanya then one wonders why the gliding scene is full of mesirable oldies?!
If we look at it from a sport point of view it is actually a relevant debate:
I’m not at all 90, but when I started with gliding, the best glider my club had available was a Ka6. A distance diamond (500km) at these days has been a very respectable (and rare) achievement. These days we see more than 100 500km flights on an average summer Saturday in Germany.
Same with round the world: As long as Russia was practically closed for such endeavors, an SEP-RTW has been an extreme challenge that required significant long range flying. These days, the biggest aviation challenge in a SEP-RTW is the Atlantic crossing – the rest is organization and bureaucracy. Accordingly…
ivark wrote:
It’s good to see that a trip like this can be done using ultralight and VFR..
… this says more about political changes than about the capabilities of microlights these days.
These flights have been done many times and for so long, to the extent that the aim now seems to be to find some new angle, e.g. youngest woman when being a woman is not really relevant to the challenge. Or ultralight, when people flew simpler less equipped planes around the world decades ago. All of them are impressive but this internet publicized phase isn’t really anything new.
@Ibra, I think the guy who flew a different Bölkow around the world in 1972 is still ‘with us’, obviously pretty advanced in years now, maybe he could consult. He shipped his plane across the Pacific if I recall correctly, but was regardless able to get sponsorship from the German Beer Industry 
I think the most impressive light aircraft RTW trip to me is the T-18 trip in 1976. A built-from-plans home built, piloted by the builder (who built it himself, no kit, no ‘support’) with very limited avionics. First homebuilt to do it, with no long breaks or rebuilds either. Government approvals done with 1976 communications. There are quite a few to choose from but that one is particularly notable to me.
What about an “oldest plane to be flown around the world”? That is a record which may be broken again and again, as long as some planes are well kept 
I think the skill set of the pilot is not trivial even if she has good ops support. In these days every ferry flight has quality ops support.
Maurice Kirk and his L-4 might have succeeded in circumnavigating the globe in about the simplest aircraft in the most pure of amateur spirit
Re. “Oldest person to fly round world”. Age 77. I think this won’t count as he wasn’t a designated pilot:
“Glenn flew on Space Shuttle Discovery’s STS-95 mission, making him the oldest person to enter Earth’s orbit, and the only person to fly in both the Mercury and the Space Shuttle programs.”-
RobertL18C wrote:
In these days every ferry flight has quality ops support.
Perhaps there are professional ferry flight organizations but for sure not “every ferry flight” is organized these days. All ferry pilots I know are more or less one person companies where the pilot does everything from organizing permits to actual flying – yes, some might have a small back office (e.g. “wife”) doing some of the paperwork but personally I’ve not yet seen a ferry flight organization with a real back office that has 24/7 view on the available weather data and is in constant contact to the pilot(s) like in these record attempt.
The ferry pilots I know work alone.
It’s a lot easier these days, with so much wx data, and comms generally, over the internet and satellite.
The thing is that, whether it is a ferry flight or some “record attempt” (really a heavy sponsorship exercise), you don’t want to waste time having a holiday on it. You have to get on with it, so good organisation is needed.
Peter wrote:
whether it is a ferry flight or some “record attempt” (really a heavy sponsorship exercise), you don’t want to waste time having a holiday on it. You have to get on with it
I get that. Especially if it is your job, you do it as efficiently as possible. But if I ever had the resources to fly around the world, it would absolutely be having a holiday doing it. I cant think of anything worse than just seeing airports and airport hotels while travelling around the world.
dublinpilot wrote:
Is there an “oldest person to fly around the world” record?
I’m sure one must be the oldest.
