Originally Posted by
compressor stall
Didn't take the tall poppy syndrome to come out.
Here we have a kid who, when most of his peers are getting pissed every other night on a backpacking tour of Europe, is getting out there and doing something pretty cool.
CS, agree with you that it's an interesting and adventurous thing for a 19 year-old to do , but ......... (there's always a but, isn't there) having watched the "youngest pilot to ........" craze in the US just get more and more ridiculous with younger and younger children "piloting" airplanes across the US, finally resulting in the death of a 7 year old girl, her "flight instructor" who was actually flying the airplane, and her media whore father who in all probability was a factor in the decision to launch into a developing thunderstorm, "youngest pilot to ... " records sort of leave a bad taste in my mouth. Can this guy actually claim to be "piloting"? Pretty clearly, yes. How about the next record holder? Probably. However, the very nature of the phenomenon assures that the challengers to the record have a progressively thinner and thinner claim to really "piloting" as it is normally understood and inevitably it just becomes a publicity farce.