An American teenager was in British Columbia Wednesday with his sights set on becoming the youngest person to ever pilot a 150-nautical-mile flight on their own.
"I really started my aviation stuff when I was 13 actually," Mohd Shaikhsorab, now 14, told CTV News. "Flying is an addiction."
Shaikhsorab took off from Abbotsford before flying to Chilliwack, Nanaimo and back—a feat that could put his name in the Guinness Book of World Records.
"It's not like driving where there's a lot of traffic out there," said Mitchell Nosko, the co-owner of Principal Air. "With the airplanes, there's not a lot of traffic so the whole time, there's lots of spaces between the students and everybody else."
The teen pilot's mother, Frazana Shaikhsorab, said she was "very proud and very nervous" about her son's world record attempt.
"I don't want to jeopardize his life, but…he's good, he's confident, so I thought why not let him try?"
The teen lives in California, but came to B.C. for the record attempt because of laws that prohibit him from flying solo in the U.S.
"You can't fly in the U.S. until you're 16 and he's 14, so if you want to do something great, you have to come to Canada," his mother said.
Shaikhsorab is already up for one world record as the youngest person to fly solo with just 16.4 hours of time in the air. That record attempt is currently under review.
The teen pilot landed back in Abbotsford after a tense two hours.
"I never felt so happy to make a radio call when I was coming back," he said. "Forget about air speed, I was looking at the fuel gauge the whole time. It goes down and up and up and down it's just crazy."
Shaikhsorab said his ultimate goal is to one day pilot a commercial jet.
With files from CTV Vancouver's Allison Hurst
