A 16-year-old microlight pilot attempting to become the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe solo was greeted with bubble tea and good-luck snacks during a transit stop at Taipei's Songshan Airport Friday.
Mack Rutherford -- whose sister Zara made a stop in Taipei during her own record-breaking round-the-world flight last year -- arrived in central Taipei from the Philippines, having set off from the Bulgarian capital Sofia on March 23.
Posing with a cardboard cutout of his sister Zara, Rutherford was warmly greatly by airport staff, who presented him with bubble tea and a pack of "Kuai Kuai" crackers.
Superstitious Taiwanese are known to place the crackers, whose name is a homophone for "behave" in Chinese, on top of machinery for good luck.
Rutherford then boarded a bus to a quarantine hotel, where he will spend the night before heading to Seoul on Saturday.
In January, Zara Rutherford, then 19 years old, became the youngest woman to fly around the world solo, and also the youngest of any gender to do so in a microlight aircraft.
Not content with taking the microlight record from his sister, Mack Rutherford is also attempting to become the youngest person to fly solo around the world in any type of aircraft, a record currently held by English aviator Travis Ludlow, who accomplished the feat in 2021 at the age of 18.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel