As far as I remember the poor student was airborne for something like two hours
Imagine if the guy went on to get a CPL/IR and then landed an interview with airline XYZ. How would you explain that to the CP?!!!
Best story I know comes from a friend of mine (could even be reading this). He was OK'd for his first solo, and as he taxied out to the RWY, the cloudbase lowered to about 600ft. TWR didn't know he was a first solo, and cleared him for take off. The guy duly took off, climbed to 1000ft and executed the turns in the circuit "in about the right places". Anyway, before TWR could get a phone call from a very concerned instructor, they'd asked him to orbit on base to allow a Herc to land. Which he did. He then used luck to let himself down and onto final, and landed.
How did he do it? By having goodness knows how many hours in MS flight sim!